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Your Save Data Is Not Safe On the Nintendo Switch (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a post-launch update to our initial Nintendo Switch review, we noted that there is no way to externally back up game save data stored on the system. A recent horror story from a fellow writer who lost dozens of hours of game progress thanks to a broken system highlights just how troublesome this missing feature can be. Over at GamesRadar, Anthony John Agnello recounts his experience with Nintendo support after his Switch turned into a useless brick for no discernible reason last week (full disclosure: I know Agnello personally and have served with him on some convention panels). After sending his (under warranty) system to Nintendo for repair, Agnello received a fixed system and the following distressing message from the company two days later: "We have inspected the Nintendo Switch system that was sent to us for repair and found that the issue has made some of the information on this system unreadable. As a result, the save data, settings, and links with any Nintendo Accounts on your system were unable to be preserved." Agnello says he lost 55 hours of progress on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as well as more progress on a few other downloadable games. While he was able to redownload the games that were deleted, he'd have to start from scratch on each one (if only all that progress was easily, instantly unlockable in some way...)
No, it's anti piracy shit.
Nearly every Nintendo product since the GameCube has been hackable by restoring a "backup" of a saved game containing data that would trigger arbitrary code execution exploits.
If they don't provide a method of getting saved game data onto or off of the device they're eliminating the method used against them most often, while only "inconveniencing" an OtherOS using size share of customers.
"I'm pretty sure you're allowed to back up your stuff to your own external drives, just like with the Wii-U. "
Uh, perhaps you don't know how to use google so you probably don't know the pages and pages of stories/anouncements of people are complaining that you can't back up your saves period on the Switch. You can't even transfer a save from one Switch to another since the saves are tied to the machine.
I think I'll wait a while longer to get a switch. See if Nintendo fixes that, although I won't hold my breath.