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Battlefield 3 created its game data folder for settings and screenshots at the top level of my documents folder: \My Documents\Battlefield 3.

Most games get this right, saving their data in the Windows-standard Saved Games folder. I'll skip the rant, but if every program selfishly dumped its settings at the top of My Documents it'd become an organizational outhouse.

I haven't found a way to tell Battlefield to move this folder to the right place. In fact I'd be happy to put it anywhere but the top of My Documents. Any ideas?

Note: there was an an earlier question about the game installation directory, but I haven't found an answer to this question there.

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Isn't there some kind of .ini-file? One that sets where this folder is set to be? I do not own the game so I'll leave this open for anyone who has more to bring to the table regarding this. – burnso Nov 3 '11 at 0:00
I believe that since this is run through Origin, that settings are done that way, not through the game itself (but I do not own the PC version of BF3) – SSumner Nov 3 '11 at 16:37
@burnso I've looked through the files in the game folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3). Unfortunately very few files are user-editable, most are binary formats. And the few that are plain text seem irrelevant to this problem. Bad Company 2 also mindlessly dumps its data files in the root Documents directory, so I have the feeling we might be stuck with it for BF3 too. – Feral Chimp Nov 3 '11 at 21:52
OMG. I just noticed that Bad Company 2 left a folder smack at the top level of my C drive. So maybe I shouldn't complain about BF3 dropping a folder in the My Documents folder. :-\ – Feral Chimp Nov 10 '11 at 5:05
@DrewG Maybe do it the same way as you would linking steam folders to another drive in the form of a simlink? – Lyrion Dec 1 '11 at 11:00
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up vote 2 down vote

Are you feeling brave? You could try experimenting with mklink in Windows...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-symlinks-in-windows-vista/

This could, however, cause Origin (or Steam, too) to wig-out and stop the game working due to copy protection issues.

There's a 3rd party app around that uses symbolic links behind the scenes to let you change Steam's game data dir so hopefully it's feasible in this case too.

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+1 for the suggestion. But as I understand symbolic links, you still need to leave a visible file sitting in the source location. In other words, the contents of the folder would move elsewhere, but in place of a top-level folder named "Battlefield 3" I'd have a top-level file named "Battlefield 3". If so, that still leaves me with an unwanted name gunking up the top-level of \My Documents. I'm not concerned about the space those files take, just the precedent: the more rogue applications squat at the top of \My Documents, the harder it is to find things that are in their proper places. – Feral Chimp Dec 3 '11 at 18:23
Yep, that's certainly the case. As far as I know, that's unavoidable. The other option would be to set your %USERPROFILE% variable to point somewhere else but that'd be a far more 'all emcompassing' change that'd affect a lot more than just Steam/Origin. – foocode Dec 4 '11 at 22:37

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