Sorry if this is in the wrong place or is the stupidest question ever asked but i need help!

My son has this game on my laptop and I need to reformat it... is the game data saved to the hard drive (as with games when I was a kid) or is it saved to a server out there in the ether (like modern games seem to be) because if i format my laptop and my kid loses his game data he may very well kill me!!

Need to know ASAP thanks in advance :)