Reviving this ancient post to inquire about this once again, this time for 12.
Because of the error from the post by @anonymous_user_d263f0c4 in 2016 (Failed to open descriptor file) I have no choice but to completely package my game. (launcher will cause this error regardless of shipping/development build type.)
However, I cannot seem to get save games to work correctly, regardless of what settings I run. I have tried every possible combination of development/shipping/distribution and ExternalFilesDir / Install Location. Nothing will let me even use a save game file on 12. I have also tried a flurry of permissions, both requesting them via blueprint node and adding them to the additional permissions in the project settings.
I’ve seen various “hack” fixes across the forums involving hardcoding the scoped storage directory into save-games and rebuilding the engine, but I can’t get any of those to work either… and they aren’t very scalable.
Any help from Epic or any other dev’s would be awesome.