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...)

Comments

Well that settles that

[maugle]

Having been on the fence about whether or not to get a Switch, this is the news that settles my decision on "hell no". The inability to back up saved games would have been somewhat tolerable if the storage medium were reliable, but clearly it is not. There's no way I'm going to risk having all my progress thrown to the four winds.

Here's what I really don't understand: saved games are small, and Nintendo presumably has capable servers because it offers downloadable games. Steam has shown us that it's perfectly reasonable to ask that the service you download your games from also back up your saves, because it's a huge benefit to the gamers at a miniscule cost to the company. Does Nintendo really not give a damn about their customers?

Re:Well that settles that

[spire3661]

Nintendo doesnt get 'infrastructure'. They dont understand that they NEED a living network to tie their products together. Nintendo doesnt like Information Age stuff, it wants to make toys, nothing more.

Re:Well that settles that

[maugle]

First, it's one guy with a soapbox to stand on. Of the other 2 million consoles, we don't know how many others have failed.
Second, the Switch has only been out for a single week and already we're seeing reports like this. Now we get to play the game of "will the failure rates follow a bathtub curve, stay constant with time, or increase with time?"

Finally, I was genuinely excited about the Switch at first. But then I heard the reports about low FPS when connected to a TV, and the joy-con connectivity issue, and the dead/stuck pixel issue, and a half-dozen tiny nitpicks (flimsy kickstand, etc); and I decided to wait and see, hoping that process improvements and software updates would fix things.
But now it's becoming pretty clear that Nintendo really cheaped out on their components. At this point there's nothing that would convince me to get a Switch other than Nintendo allowing save game backups or implementing their own cloud backups, and also releasing a newer model Switch with more durable parts.

Nintendo is done, in my estimation

[Anonymous Coward]

This only proves how cobbled together the switch is. Who games that doesn't want some sort of reasonable ability to save games and back them up? Does anyone at Nintendo play games anymore? Wasn't planning on buying a Switch and it wouldn't surprise me if it becomes a nightmare for Nintendo.

Seems safe to me

[Gravis Zero]

Nobody got unauthorized access to his data, so it's perfectly safe. As for data loss, if you are prohibited from transferring your data, then going in you should assume you could lose all your data. This applies to all devices, not just consoles.

It's just a game

[tezbobobo]

So this is definitely inconvenient. Now, that's out of the way lets put this in perspective. You're not losing your PhD project, or mission critical data. Your losing some save data if, just if, there is a problem with that part of the system. This shouldn't be a deal breaker unless there are reports of this becoming a widespread problem. But again, the real problem there is that they sold you a faulty product, and not that you lost some game progress.

Re:No save

[Yosho]

I remember a time where saving functions did not exist at all. It was still fun to play video games.

And in most of those games, the progression came from playing the same difficult levels over and over until you could beat it; most of those classic games without save functionality can be beaten in under an hour or two if you know what you're doing.

That's not quite the same as a modern game that has 100 hours of progression and gradual access to new content.

Re:This is awesome

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"[we] welcomed things crashing and deleting data so that we can stay up all night building up Nintendo thumbs."

uhh more like we left our consoles powered on for weeks until mom plugged in the vacuum one day and "I just needed the outlet for a sec dear! it can't be that bad!"