Topic: inFAMOUS saves tied to disc - can't use them for digital version.

I got the UK disc version, played the game, copied my saves to a USB device then sold the game and deleted it from the PS4.
I decided to buy it again, this time from the UK PSN store. But when I try to copy my saves back it won't let me.
I get the message "Cannot copy. The application for this saved data is not installed."
Guess I'll have to start over...

That's odd and annoying. Did you have any PS Plus cloud backups per chance? Maybe those will work?

I don't have PS Plus.
Yeah it's a little annoying, but I'm going to play through on opposite (evil) Karma. My disc saves were good Karma.

Just a little update to this.
I was on a 14 day trial of PS+. It ran out a week or so ago, so I didn't mention it. Now, I just got a 2 day trial and my original saves are still on the cloud.
Sadly, it won't let me download them, giving the same error message as in my first post.
I guess there's some technical reason why you can't use disc saves with the digital game, but it is a bit stupid.

There unfortunately seems to be a few games like this. I had the same problem with a game on the PS3 (sadly can't remember what the actual game was now), and it drove me mad because I had done so much on my disc-based save file. At least you'll be doing an evil playthrough anyway, though. Who knows, you might get the urge to come back one day down the line and do a good karma run again.

This is really a weird thing, it's like they don't eat your money.

It is NOT just as "simple" as it being tied to the disc.
I originally bought the disc version and completed a light run, then sold it to a buddy. Regretted it, and yesterday bought the disc version again. Guess what.. It will NOT let me download my PS Plus cloud saves!! I think it's a patch that has screwed up. I'm extremely annoyed at the moment.. And it doesn't seem like Sucker Punch is even aware
The annoying thing is that i had some light stuff left to complete

So maybe the save is tied to an individual disc serial number or something. Well I suppose that's one way of trying to stop the pre-owned market! (Well maybe not as they would have to block the person you sell the disc to from using their saves it - that's not going to happen).

Maybe try contacting Sony and see if it's some kind of bug.

I've run into a lot of games on all platforms that treat the physical and digital versions of games as two different games in a way. If you're familiar with the way the PSP filesystem worked, it makes more sense. Each game gets a "save folder" with it's own unique name. Sometimes, this mean that physical and digital versions of the same game would get TWO folders that cannot be shared.

At least with PSP, it was possible to spoof the system (without hacks) into sharing the save, but I don't think it's possible with a PS Vita, PS3, or PS4.

As for your cloud save issue, that seems like abnormal behavior. I've used the cloud storage to transfer saves from different PS4s using multiple copies of the same game plenty of times. I don't think I've tried with inFAMOUS yet, but it sounds more to me that something is wonky with your uploaded save.

My cloud saves with other games were fine.
But it doesn't matter now (at leat for inFAMOUS) as I've overtaken the progress my savegames had.

Just a note, I keep a 32GB micro USB dongle plugged into my PS4 AT ALL TIMES. I use that for my save backups, not the cloud. For one, I'm not a PS Plus member. But even if I was, I'd still use the USB drive. No internet access required, no PS Plus required, no worries about issues downloading saves. Highly recommended for backing up save data.