[HELP!!!] ALL MY SAVES ARE GONE!???!!

@omgyamisocringe  Your second screenshot shows three viable saves, and some backups, with a creation date of January 9 but a modified date from November.  That suggests they're older than the creation date would suggest.  Have you tried loading these saves?  If they don't show up in-game, try manually recovering their backups.  Here's how:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2014/09/recover-backup-save-game/

As for why this happened, Steam shouldn't delete your saves regardless of how many computers you use to play Sims 4.  If that is in fact happening, it's a serious flaw, but I would have expected to see more cases by now.  More likely is that some other syncing service is the problem, for example OneDrive.  Do you use any of these?  OneDrive is built into Windows, of course, but there are others like Dropbox that you can install and run manually.

Separately, have you moved the location of your Sims 4 user folder at any point, for example to an external drive?  I don't mean making a backup copy but something like creating a symbolic link to tell the game to look elsewhere for your user data.

@puzzlezaddictI don't have anything synced. I don't even have any of those clouds installed into my device, so there's no possibility of it syncing. Both the game, launcher, and windows were updated at the time prior to this random incident ( a little scared to update/repair anything incase it messes up somethings, but atp I think I'm screwed now). Thankfully, everything else connected to it is saved, but I will try and see what sims are saved when I load it up this week.

And no, that little screenshot I showed you was the main pathway. I've never geared it towards anywhere else other than what it automatically sets itself to when installing it into your device. Do you know exactly what that steam file does btw? I read that it backups your save progress, but doesn't do too much of anything else that would require you to manually do it yourself? If so, why doesn't it have it's own folder?

Also, in mentioning on whether or not I saved prior? I was taking a break so I didn't really make a copy of all my saves. I only managed a handful and they're all sprayed throughout either my desktop, usb, emails, but I don't think those are the most recent or in fact have the "Slot_000save.ver" files with them, so it's pretty much just a guessing game with that. 

@omgyamisocringe  The Steam file is too small to hold any save data, so it's more likely some metadata, and it might not be specific to Sims 4.  As far as I know, Steam doesn't support cloud saving for Sims 4 either, so this file may not have any actual use.  But I don't have a Steam install and haven't experimented myself.

I do think it's worth loading the saves in your screenshot, including the backups, to see what you get.  You can also search your computer for the other saves to see if any show up.  I'd suggest downloading Everything, from VoidTools, which is a free and highly efficient search tool.  Search for Slot_ and see what turns up, then rename backups if necessary.

Yeah, I tried that and...all of saves are gone. :Ɪ

The files that I showed just so happened to be the most recent files I installed after my break, but I didn't even play with those, so...seems like I have to start from scratch again and just scavenge with whatever saves I've managed to have left. Most of what I found on my desktop (including the other accounts I have attached to this one) only goes back to 2021, unless it's mods, then there isn't much to see. But, thanks for the app though! :Ɪ

@omgyamisocringe  I'm sorry to hear that.  It's probably not much consolation now, but most of us have had to learn about manual backups the hard way at some point.  I lost an entire Sims 3 Saves folder a while back because I wasn't paying close-enough attention.  And and now I have three external drives for various purposes.

@puzzlezaddictYeah, I'm really just mad because it wouldn't let me undo like how you'd normally would, and that I had some unfinished/saved tray files attached to those saves, but thankfully it didn't bork my tray files and cc, otherwise, I'd really be screwed. It's one of those "once every blue full moon" moments with technology where it decides to do the complete utter opposite of what you expected/asked of.

Welp, I'm off to saving my content now. Thanks, again for the help.