They don't have to work. Copying saves in this case is useless. First you need to do the procedure of exporting all data from your saves, made by you at the end of the 1st season. And then, when you start season 2, you can use them. Here --> #10,552 is the instruction from the dev.
And for many of us this time flew by quite quickly, considering that this time quite a few players, who in the past usually waited for the final ver, couldn't resist and still played the test version, haha..That's why there were a lot of reasons for discussion and debate...Not to mention that Tess herself was not silent all this time and gave all new reasons for interesting conversation...
p.s. So in that sense I can't really complain. Tess's update turned out great, and the final version should be coming very soon.