Symlinked SAVE folder crashes the launcher

Game launcher fails with the below crash report. Apparently it chokes on a symlinked SAVE folder. Removing the folder mitigates the problem but blocks sharing saved games ona  LAN of multiple clients.

---- Minecraft Crash Report -------- Minecraft Crash Report ----// There are four lights!
Time: 2018.08.11. 16:45Description: Initializing game
java.lang.RuntimeException: java.nio.file.FileAlreadyExistsException: C:\Users\pisti\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves at cbp.<init>(SourceFile:38) at cbm.<init>(SourceFile:42) at cfi.am(SourceFile:463) at cfi.a(SourceFile:377) at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:144)Caused by: java.nio.file.FileAlreadyExistsException: C:\Users\pisti\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.translateToIOException(WindowsException.java:81) at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.rethrowAsIOException(WindowsException.java:97) at sun.nio.fs.WindowsException.rethrowAsIOException(WindowsException.java:102) at sun.nio.fs.WindowsFileSystemProvider.createDirectory(WindowsFileSystemProvider.java:504) at java.nio.file.Files.createDirectory(Files.java:674) at java.nio.file.Files.createAndCheckIsDirectory(Files.java:781) at java.nio.file.Files.createDirectories(Files.java:727) at cbp.<init>(SourceFile:36) ... 4 more