Public API Built-Ins

"Prototype". Zero-config local save, desktop/mobile/WebGL. No settings. Not consoles: those gate saving behind their own SDK, so they need a PersistenceManager subclass of your own.

"Local File". The manager to ship with: you name the file and the folder, and turn compression, encryption and the backup copy on.

"Player Prefs". Saves through PlayerPrefs; synchronous; good for small data. The automatic load retry is off: a Player Prefs read never fails transiently. It reports no errors either, since Unity's own API has no channel for them: a save always comes back successful, and a write that did not survive reads later as a first run. A binary serializer is base64 encoded to fit, costing about a third more space: the one manager where a binary save is larger than a text one.

Base for remote managers. ReadExecutionMode is always AsyncOnly and WriteExecutionMode is PreferAsync only while a cache is on, otherwise AsyncOnly: a remote load is never synchronous. Implement the async FetchRemote / StoreRemote / DeleteRemote primitives (each reports an Answer); inherit async, cache and push. Worked example: A custom remote manager.

"Server (HTTP)". Saves to your own server, or to a backend service, with a GET, a PUT and a DELETE at url/slot/id.

"Cloud Save (UGS)". Per signed-in player. Requires UGS init + sign-in. RegularSaveDelay defaults to 60 seconds, as on the HTTP manager.

The project-wide settings of the remote managers, as set under Project Settings > Persistent Asset > Remote. Read here already clamped.

"Steam Cloud". Saves through Steam Remote Storage, synchronously; the Steam client syncs the files. Needs Steamworks.NET, and your game to call SteamAPI.Init. Windows, macOS and Linux only. A plain PersistenceManager, not a RemotePersistenceManager: no offline cache, no payload encryption, and the Steam client does the syncing.

What the Server (HTTP) manager's Backend Service fields are made of.

"Platform (Routing)". Saves through a different manager depending on where the game runs: it stores nothing itself and hands every operation to the route it resolved. Routes are authored in its inspector, each claiming platforms (and optionally a distribution) and owning the manager that stores there; the first route claiming the current platform wins, and one with no platform is the fallback. It keeps the serializer, the slot settings and the automatic load and save for the whole setup, and takes the execution modes, the timeouts and the storage from the route. With no matching route, persistence is disabled for the target and the reason is reported. See Save per platform.

"Session (Memory)". Keeps the data in memory for the session and writes nothing to disk. Automatic load and save are forced on, whatever a target's policy asks for, and the load retry and the regular save are off.

"Test". A fake in-memory manager for seeing how the game behaves when saving misbehaves: force any operation to any outcome, and add a delay to it to try out loading screens, timeouts and cancellation. Assigning it always keeps an import copy of the setup it replaces, restored in one click from its inspector, and it never ships: a release build fails while one exists in the project, and a development build logs a warning. Worked example: Write a test manager.

"Unity JSON", the default serializer: serializes fields by Unity's own rules into readable JSON, and supports save versioning. Its inspector Format option is PrettyPrint, OneLine, or Obfuscated (compact base64 so players cannot casually read or edit it, obfuscation, not encryption).

"Newtonsoft JSON". Serializes the union of what Unity serializes and what Newtonsoft serializes (dictionaries, properties, nullables, plain C# objects), and supports save versioning. Present only when the com.unity.nuget.newtonsoft-json package is installed. See What can be saved.

"Odin". Serializes through Odin Serializer, with shared references and polymorphic types handled by Odin itself. Present only when Odin is in the project, either the serializer bundled with Odin Inspector or the free standalone Odin Serializer, which the package detects on its own. See What can be saved.

"MemoryPack". Raw bytes, with the readers and writers generated at compile time: no reflection at run time and no AOT step for an IL2CPP build, at the cost of marking every persistent type [MemoryPackable] partial and every asset member [MemoryPackAllowSerialize]. It also writes only public fields and settable public properties: a private [SerializeField] field the other serializers persist is left out with no error unless it carries [MemoryPackInclude]. A MemoryPack save is raw bytes, so save upgrades and field resets cannot read old values out of it. Present only when MemoryPack is in the project. See What can be saved.

It has no settings of its own.

Derive from this instead of PersistentScriptableObject for a type serialized by MemoryPackDataSerializer. Deriving straight from the base class does not compile: MemoryPack needs every inherited member marked, and the base holds a PersistenceManager member inside the package that you cannot mark yourself. This class marks it for you and changes nothing else. Explained in What can be saved.

Lets MemoryPack save a field pointing at a project asset: it writes the asset's registry id and looks the asset back up on load. The package ships one for Sprite, Texture2D, AudioClip, Material, Mesh, GameObject and ScriptableObject. Register your own for any other asset type, before the first load: MemoryPackFormatterProvider.Register(new AssetFormatter<AnimatorController>()). It has to match the field's declared type. An asset the registry no longer knows reads back as null.

Explained in Secure saves.

Explained in Secure saves.

An anchor decides what fails the integrity check; Encryption decides the cost: Encrypt leaves the save unreadable, AppendHash loads it marked as tampered. Explained in Secure saves.

Low-level file IO shared by the file-backed managers and the offline cache. You only need it to build your own file-based manager. Explained in Extend the package.

Encrypt or hash save data with a key derived from the project secret (Project Settings > Persistent Asset > Security). Backs the FilePersistenceManager protection options, and the remote managers' payload and offline-cache protection. Explained in Extend the package.

Gzip compress and decompress byte data. Empty data compresses to empty and decompresses back to empty; anything else must be one whole gzip stream, so a truncated one is refused instead of inflating in part. Explained in Extend the package.

Helpers for asynchronous manager code: thread hopping and cancellation. Explained in Extend the package.

The "<slot>" placeholder handling and the reversible file-path slot codec the file-backed managers share. Explained in Extend the package.

Flush the in-memory file system to IndexedDB on WebGL; call after writing or deleting save files. A no-op off WebGL. Explained in Extend the package.

Reads JSON text into a SaveNode tree, to implement Serializer.ParseToNode in a JSON serializer (what lets save upgrades and field resets recover old values). Explained in Extend the package.

Copies every data field of an object and puts it back. Capture before deserializing into a target and restore if that fails, so a failed load leaves the target exactly as it was, as Serializer's deserialize half requires. The copy is shallow. Explained in Extend the package.