Well, you can build in the functionality for developers of new Steamworks games to use in the future, sure, but there's not much to be done about a) non-Steamworks games where devs don't feel like recoding their save system for every digital storefront, and b) older games that aren't getting updates anymore. The reality is that most people aren't going to have an entirely isolated Steam folder anytime soon.

There are a few tools out there that can help with the complication of saves being all over the place though. I think Game Save Manager[www.gamesave-manager.com] is the one a friend of mine was using.

I like the simplicity of it and it would certainly make saved games easier to manage, but try convincing the major game companies (and the indie companies you love) to just change their existing code. Its probably not going to happen.
I usually backup/restore one game's saved game at a time usually after an install or just before an uninstall (if its not backed by the steam cloud). It can be a bit of a hastle, but each game has its own idea of where save games go. I guess if you do this often enough you could make a DOS Batch file (or macUnix/Linux script) to do the copying for you for all your games at once. One for storing, another script for restoring. Perhaps a third one to clear out all saved games entirely.

it used to be that all games have save location in my documents folder many years ago but over the last 10 years companies have gotten lazy and dump the saves all over the place.
For a game to be ported for steam they already have preset guides manufaturers have to meet ,so why cant valve add in game save location as a prerequisite for all steam games??

With regards to such utilities as 'Game Save Manager' they are ussless when you change to a new operating system as the default save location might not exist .
IE some games on windows 7 save to users/app data/local/"game name'
but on earlier windows xp this location does not exist and game saves would usually be in "My documents".
Windows 8 is again different from both ,game save managers are only usefull if you are NOT changing operating system.
Thats why having all steam games saving to a common steam folder would make changing operating system (or hardware upgrade) relatively painless,provided of coarse that the game is still supported on a new operating system.

I store my games on a different hard drive, which makes it extremely easy to change the system disc without affecting the games. And there are very few different locations that games save game-files to. I really don't see the problem.

you obviosly dont have many games then.
Ive been gaming over 2 decades and still like to play old clasics like red alert etc as well as all the newest titles,there are close to 40 different save locations and many games(including many new ones) dont accept or allow changing the default save location.
Even tho they allow installing to a diferent drive (ie steam games)

Originally posted by Brontobyte:

there are close to 40 different save locations and many games(including many new ones) dont accept or allow changing the default save location.

So how do you expect Steam to change that? They can't just go fiddling around in other people's code.

For a game to be released on steam they already have to conform to a number of valve rules and conditions etc they only have to add a stipulation about default save location.
Manufacturers already mod their games to suit release on steam so i dont see how it would be a problem

Asking that of future devs is, like I said, more or less fine. But if you mandate it for existing products, what you'll see is a tonne of older games getting removed from Steam because the publishers don't want to spare people to go back over them for one tiny little thing like that.

Yeah i realise that which is why they should change it sooner rather than later so that future games all save in one location
Althought fyi there are loads of steam games where valve paid the manufacturer/creator for the right to port the game into steam (ie Dota 2,portal etc and many older games too)and for those games they could add the change to game save location without any hassle.

Just for reference, Dota 2 and Portal weren't ported to Steam. They were developed completely internally at Valve after the developers of other games (Dota and Narbacular Drop, respectively) were hired to do so. Same thing with Team Fortress, DoD, CS etc. They're Valve games, so of course Valve can change them without problem.

My other thought with having a unified steam game save location is due to the limitation with solid state drives.The more frequently an SSD is written to the sooner it will die,since most saves are somewhere in the windows drive this means that gamers like myself should be concerned and interested in having all the saves OFF the SSD.All my games are installed to conventional drives on Raid 0,but they all stick the saves within windows ,im running windows on dual SSD also Raid 0 and althought my SSD's are only 2 months old they are already showing signs of premature aging due to frequent games saving to them.
Seems to me that game creators valve included should be recognising that SSD is the drive of choice for running windows and should therefore integrate options to change the save location so that its not on the SSD.