Steam Q&A

[S. Mitchell]

If you have any questions about Steam regarding how a specific thing works or where something involved with Steam is located, please post them here.

First of all, to get this Information Bank started, I will answer a commonly asked question.

Q: What is the Steam Cloud, what does it do, and why must it be synchronised?

A: The Steam Cloud is what allows you to view and talk to your friends while in game. When you click Shift+Tab it brings up an in-game overlay which includes things like the Steam community, your friends list, and recent players. Without the Steam Cloud synchronised you won't be able to view any of this. That is why sometimes you can play the game, but you cannot view your friends list. The Steam Cloud is then being either updated, or it isn't synchronised. Finally, for all questions on how to synchronise the cloud, it should do it by itself. If it isn't synchronising, just give it time, and it eventually will.

[Goodwin 1st MRB]

Also...

there are options which disable sync'ing to the cloud, but these options are NOT recommended to be utilized.