It might be New Year's Eve, but Larian Studios still has an update for us on the Baldur's Gate 3 deleted saves issue for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S! In a nutshell, work is still continuing, but we do also have a potential workaround.
The developer has once again confirmed that it's a firmware issue on Xbox's side, and apparently the problem is that the game thinks the save has been successful, but it hasn't been "fully committed to disk yet".
So, while work continues to try and fix this, Larian Studios has offered the following workaround:
1. Create a Larian account at https://larian.com/account.
2. Go to the options menu from the main menu. Under gameplay, activate cross-saves, linking your Larian and Xbox accounts.
3. From now on, your last 5 saves will automatically be uploaded to the Larian servers. It is important that you do not exit the game before the upload is finished. The upload is finished when the message “Syncing cloud save” is no longer visible.
4. If the firmware bug occurs, you will need to re-activate the cross-save functionality in the options screen. This will give you access to the save games that were successfully uploaded.
"We will make this process more fluid and extend the number of save games that get uploaded in the coming days."
It's still early days so we don't know how successful this workaround will prove - we're seeing mixed reports from the Baldur's Gate 3 community so far. Still, it's probably worth a try if you're concerned about losing progress in BG3!
Alongside this, Larian has addressed the issue as being "frustrating" and "unacceptable", and has confirmed that everyone is working extremely hard to try and get it resolved as quickly as possible. Hopefully we're almost there now!
"Microsoft is aware of the issue and is working on it but obviously during the holidays everyone is working at lower capacity so it may take a while before a proper fix becomes available."
"We completely understand that losing progress is frustrating, and unacceptable. We’re doing everything we can to ensure this problem - which we understand is unique - is resolved as quickly as possible, and we’ll keep you up to date with progress."