Checkpoint64 has a page on Steam. You can wishlist it, follow it to get pinged the day it ships, and — if you want to kick the tyres early — request access to the playtest. That's the news. The rest of this post is what the page means, and the one thing people keep asking: if it's on Steam, isn't this just Steam Cloud?
What the Steam page is
It's the front door. A wishlist on Steam is the cleanest possible version of our launch list — Valve tells you when we go live, you don't hand us anything, and there are no follow-up emails to unsubscribe from. If you've been waiting for a "tell me when it's out" button that isn't a newsletter, that's the wishlist button.
The page also opens the playtest. Checkpoint64 is still pre-1.0 — we're targeting a Q3 2026 launch — and the playtest is how the rough edges get found before then. If you've got a save folder you'd be genuinely sad to lose, you're exactly the person we want stress-testing the version history.
Nothing about being on Steam changes the shape of the product. It's still a free desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with the same pay-once-or-stay-free deal: a free plan that's the real product sized small, an optional one-time Lifetime purchase for more space, and a Pro tier. No subscriptions live on the Steam page and none live off it.
"But Steam already backs up my saves"
This is the question the storefront practically begs, so let's answer it head-on: being on Steam does not make Checkpoint64 a reskin of Steam Cloud. They solve different problems, and the difference is the whole reason the app exists.
Steam Cloud syncs. Checkpoint64 versions. Cloud's job is to make your latest save appear on every machine you own. That's genuinely useful and we're not knocking it — but "the latest save, everywhere" is exactly the wrong tool the moment your latest save is the broken one. Sync will faithfully copy a corrupted file to every device you have before you notice anything is wrong. There's no "yesterday" to go back to, because sync only ever cares about now. We wrote a whole post on why cloud saves aren't backups; the short version is that a copy of one file isn't a history of it.
Steam Cloud only covers Steam games that opted in. A surprising number don't, and that's before you leave Steam at all. Checkpoint64 watches the folder, so it works across Steam, GOG, Epic, the Microsoft Store, emulators, and modded launchers the same way — presets for 60+ games and 7 emulators out of the box, and "point it at any folder" for everything else. Your GOG copy of a game and your Steam copy land in the same logbook.
Steam Cloud is yours alone. It has no concept of handing a world to a friend, taking a lock so two people don't stomp each other's progress, or a logbook that shows whose turn it was. That co-op layer is a big part of what Checkpoint64 is for, and it has no equivalent in any platform's cloud.
So Checkpoint64 sitting on Steam isn't a contradiction — it's where the people who care about their saves already are. It runs happily alongside Steam Cloud; let Cloud put the latest save on your other PC, and let Checkpoint64 keep every version underneath so a bad write is never the only copy.
How to help right now
- Wishlist and follow on Steam — it's the lowest-effort way to hear about launch, and wishlists genuinely move the needle on whether Valve shows the page to anyone else.
- Join the playtest if you want to run a real save through it before 1.0 and tell us where it creaks.
- Bring a weird save. A 40-hour modded Minecraft world, an emulator memory card, a co-op Valheim seed two people pass back and forth — the edge cases are the most useful thing you can hand us.
Wishlist Checkpoint64 on Steam and Valve will tell you the day it ships — or grab the early build now and start a history under your saves today.