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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...)
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?
I'm 71 tears old.
I remember we had to walk uphill everywhere we went until that guy, what's his name, proved the downhill theory.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Ladies and gentlemen, that girl you wish you hadn't started a conversation with at the party!
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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!"
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