Nintendo Switch Update Kills Easy Game Sharing—Here’s Why Fans Are Furious

by

Summary

  • Switch owners can no longer play the same game online on two consoles simultaneously.
  • The old loophole was replaced with Virtual Game Cards, which treat digital games as physical cards and require them to be “ejected” before they can be played on a different device.
  • It’s still possible to play the same copy of a game on two devices if the non-owner console is offline.

As a Nintendo Switch gamer, I’ve noticed a shift in the way I can share games with my fellow gamers. It used to be simple and convenient to play two online titles simultaneously across devices, but that’s no longer the case following the latest system update. Now, game sharing seems a bit more challenging than before.

Until now, you could play a digital game for Nintendo Switch online on a device marked as the main console, even if someone else was using it on a secondary console at the same time. However, the introduction of the GameShare feature in the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 seems to indicate that this long-standing option may no longer be available.

It was predicted correctly that the loophole would be addressed, as Eurogamer confirmed. This adjustment was made in the most recent Switch operating system update, which became available on April 29th. The new OS version now accommodates Virtual Game Cards, designed to streamline the process of transferring digital games between consoles. With this revised system viewing digital licenses as physical games, users must now remove (or “eject”) them from one device before playing them on another.

It’s Still Possible To Play a Switch Game on 2 Consoles Simultaneously—Just Not Online

Although Nintendo’s Virtual Game Cards cannot be shared between two systems in their traditional manner, there’s an alternative way to accomplish this without using them. With the recent update, you can now enable the “Use Online Licenses” option located at the bottom of your Profile menu. This feature allows your console to play games even if it doesn’t have a Virtual Game Card. However, keep in mind that this method is only effective for offline gameplay and only under the condition that the same game license isn’t being used on another system connected to the internet simultaneously.

Essentially, if you don’t have a Virtual Game Card for a specific title, only the individual associated with the Nintendo Account used to buy it will be able to play it online. The “Use Online Licenses” feature in the Switch settings doesn’t affect Virtual Game Cards. Some Switch users have expressed their dissatisfaction with this change on social media, mainly because they were accustomed to playing a single game copy among friends and family members, which is no longer supported on the Switch OS version 20.0.0.

In addition to improving game-sharing functions, the new Switch OS update has also redesigned the eShop. The “Current Offers” and “Charts” sections now organize games based on sales data from the past three days instead of downloads. This change highlights popular recent titles more effectively while giving less prominence to free-to-play games and low-quality ones known as shovelware.

Read More

2025-04-30 19:42