If you've been concerned about what would happen to your Nintendo Switch cloud saves when your subscription to the online service expired - worry no more. Nintendo has provided a statement to IGN explaining what exactly happens in this scenario. It turns out you'll have plenty of time to recover your cloud saves.
Provided you resubscribe to the Switch Online service within 180 days or at least six months after a subscription has ended, you'll be able to recover your previous cloud saves. Here's the official word from a Nintendo spokesperson:
If a Nintendo Switch Online membership expires, users won’t be able to access their Save Data Cloud backups. However, Nintendo will allow users who resubscribe within 180 days to access their previous Save Data Cloud backups.
As highlighted by IGN, this is significantly different to existing information provided about cloud saves on Nintendo's website - suggesting save backups would be lost permanently if a subscription expired.
Save data stored with Save Data Cloud cannot be kept outside of the duration of your Nintendo Switch Online membership.
It's a relief to know the cloud saves will hang around. In other words, you won't have to frantically resubscribe before your existing membership expires in order to keep your cloud saves safe.
Are you glad to hear this? Were you planning to resubscribe to Nintendo Switch Online as soon as possible in order to keep your cloud saves? Tell us below.
[source au.ign.com]
Comments 106
Can everyone calm down now?
Some good news about the online finally
So how about local backups now - so no need to care one way or the other.
Imagine that, someone took the effort to contact Nintendo and ask them... meanwhile you guys run article after article with speculation for the clicks..
The only thing I would want to backup is Splatoon 2 but we can't do that for some stupid reason.
I hope people aren't going to congratulate Nintendo for alleviating a problem they intentionally made themselves to try and sell people on the subscription service.
And it still doesn't solve the self created issue of not being able to back up your saves to the SD card offline, and the only back up option being a paid subscription service.
Reminder that nobody has a paid subscription service as the only means to back up your saves, including Nintendo before the Switch.
Or the nonsense of not allowing certain games be backed up because they think it'll be used for cheating.
Thank you Lakitu!
It was never really an issue to begin with. 1 day or 180 days local saves still exist. Just some folk like to complain and this was something to complain about.
That's more than generous. 6 months.
On a side note can I just say how much I abhor IGN? What an absolutely terrible mess of a web site; the advertisements are just overwhelming, and the layout of the web site is an utter mess. Whenever I occasionally visit I try to exit it as fast as possible. No idea why IGN is regarded so highly or why anyone uses their site, it's horrible.
The tagline for this article has me thinking that the writer had Futurama in mind.
What an extreme swing! People thought they would lose their saves in a day so they were bashing Nintendo. Now, it seems Nintendo is doing it for half a year which seems generous! Ahhhh, the emotional swings of the internet.
@SuperWeird I think the mobile version has less advertisements.
This is crazy. I’m outraged!
@SuperWeird Yep,it's a terrible website. The layout, the slow drip feed of news, the high scores for practically every AAA game, the horrible comment section.Then there is the plagiarism. I've no idea why they are so big.
Why didn’t they say this during the Direct or any time before this launched?
What are people gonna complain about next?
@Tulio517 no, they will complain about something new.
@SuperWeird Do you not have adblock?
@OorWullie
You talking about IGN or here? 😉
IGN is a horrible website, BUT, their Nintendo Voice Chat podcast they do every week is superb. It gets posted on YouTube every Friday I think.
The guys in the current round table are phenomenal. Brian Altano has to be one of the most knowledgeable people in all of video gaming journalism, by a landslide. That guy has played every single game and knows every single detail in extreme depth about any topic discussed. Zach is awesome, the gals are cool... Casey DeFreitas is especially awesome. She's a huge Monster Hunter fiend like me.
So ya, I hate IGN, but I watch their weekly Nintendo Voice Chat epidodes on YouTube every week. These are people that genuinely love Nintendo, and are more entertaining and relatable and knowledgeable than just about any Nintendo fan site I've ever been to.
I’m just glad nobody freaked out before learning this update.
@JaxonH I have the same opinion as you. I check IGN ONLY for entertainment news because everything else they do is toxic and annoying (except for their Nintendo podcast).
That’s good to hear.
6 months!! Nintendo you're awesome!!
The wording on Nintendo’s site means exactly what it says. The subscriber can’t keep access to cloud saves outside the subscription period. Means the same thing now as it did day 1.
Great news, at least this is clearer than Pokémon Bank.. just in basic research for this comment I've read so many heartfelt stories of decade long Pokémon collections lost due to "Pokémon may start to dissapear eventually".. and people not being notified their subscription was up.
Now let's hope we can play NES games for 180 days after cancellation
Only 6 months !!! Nintendo you greedy bast...hold on i'm kidding 😁😘
Talk about fake news...and clickbait...pretty crazy huh ? 🤔
And they withheld/refused to tell us this until now....why?
The only thing I want to know correctly is if the online service has really improved the performance to play online or it stays the same, I say it because it is difficult to play online and that every time: "connection error"..., * sigh *
@Tulio517
You know, this is internet, calm down everybody ""For now""!!
That's actually really generous, Nintendo Switch Online is worth it just for the cloud saves if you ask me.
@SuperWeird I keep going back to IGN because I like the NVC crew; Brian Altano is one of my favorite gaming website personalities, and I also like Daemon’s interviews. I do miss Naomi and Jose though. But yeah the site design is messy and the ads too rampant.
But the biggest problem I have is how toxic the community is as it’s absolutely overrun with stuck-up Sony Ponies who attack any goodwill article to the other two consoles or even PC, especially when their games rate higher than Sony first party ones.
When I compare Kotaku’s reader community (or NintendoLife’s) the maturity on display is night and day. You can actually learn a thing or two from the smart discussions in the comments.
Translation error? Good news, regardless.
That's a relief!
After all the backlash I guess they didn't have a choice but they still need to make it work for all games and add local save backups
Also Nintendo copy Sony with the 6 months 😜
So who read “Good News Everyone” in the subheading with the voice from Futurama?
@OorWullie Honestly, unless I'm mistaken the plagiarism incident was one dude who upon being exposed was taken care of swiftly by IGN, whereupon they then issued apologies and reimbursed the affected parties. I don't particularly like the site, but their zero-tolerance for plagiarism was commendable. They can't really be blamed for one of their writers turning bad at some point (though I'm surprised their reader base didn't catch his actions sooner).
Walks in, calmly reads article....
Sees a door leading to the comment section.
Pokes comment section with a stick, hears an angry buzzing....
Me: NOPE.
Walks away whistling sheepishly.
Good news. Seems like releasing this info would have been a good idea in, say, June.
@Xaessya thats because of the cheating problem in splatoon 2 thats why it and few others were excluded from cloud saves.
@mikegamer Because it wasn't part of their plan but after the backlash they had no choice but to give players a certain time to regain their saves
I've visited this site every day for almost 2 years now and it''s sad to see how far down the site had come particularly since Thomas Whitehead left. For the amount of workers you guys have it seems like there is very little effort going into the articles of which there are only a few per day. As @Rika_Yoshitake mentioned above you guys are getting clicks by making a speculation on someone else's article, very unprofessional.
@JayronAuron The plagiarism part was actually meant to be in jest, I probably should have added a winky face after it. You're right, it was commendable how they dealt with that. It's something that could happen to any website.
@JaxonH I'll check it out cheers. I've never really visited the site much for years. I used to always check them for a 2nd or 3rd opinion and to get their take on big news, reveals etc... But the last few times I've visited, there's been news that was several months old still under the main headlines. I just had a quick look there and one of their main headlines is "Little Dragons Cafe announced for Switch.". That's from February, the game has since released. They don't even have a Switch section. When you click Nintendo you get '3DS' and 'Wii U'. That's embarrassing. It's hard to take their opinion seriously when they don't even recognise Switch as a main player.
Still a nonissue.
@SuperWeird
And don’t read the comments no matter what.
I do like thier NVC (Nintendo Voice Chat) tho and they seem like a nice bunch of people behind the scenes.
Game saves wouldn't be this difficult had Nintendo didn't screw up the process of saving games on the Switch. C'mon Nintendo we had things called memory cards with over gigabyte storage of space now. All you had to do was let us use them.
And I just read the subheading in Professor Farnsworth's voice
@SuperWeird agreed, but the videos they produce are the best in the game news industry.
@Adrevenue
So glad im not the only one who feels this way. In a span of a few months its gotten progressively worse and worse.
@OorWullie
You sure you don't just have an old page showing or something? I just went there and I see nothing but current articles, and not a peep about 3DS or Wii U. If you click the menu on the top left and select games and then select Nintendo it takes you to a page with current articles pertaining to the switch. Not that I ever really visit their site or anything, but ya...
https://www.ign.com/nintendo
Definitely check out their IGN Nintendo Voice Chat (NVC) on YouTube though. They just posted a new video that talks about their impressions of the online service and Valkyria Chronicles 4, among other things.
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCG275E2gosKB-UPk-qCK8qw
So who's going to be the first person to sign up for a free trial for a week, upload all of their save data, cancel at the end of the free trial, then check back in 179 days to tell us if it's still there or not?
This makes sense, was probably always this way in somebody's head at Ntinedo, but like early amiibo and the first go round of the NES Classic, Nintneod was probably worried about all of the clouds getting too filled up with data so they wanted to keep storage to a minimum.
@JaxonH I'm just doing a Google search and clicking the top link which is m.ign.com , that's the mobile version. This is what I see when I click the menu
However if I click your link it's different, I see what you're seeing and if I click Nintendo it takes me to the page rather than open a drop down menu. It will be my location, the mobile version must be taking me to an international version that isn't updated as frequently.
@GKO900
Let's just hope they don't copy Sony's $60 a year price tag for those extra six months of cloud saves.
Anyway, glad to hear it! Not that I plan on not being subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online, but cool regardless. I definitely think the service will improve with time.
@JaxonH
NVC is great, the only good thing about IGN these days.
@Rika_Yoshitake
Agreed. All this unfounded hysteria was drummed up by NL, who more than ever appear to be moving toward the "try this one weird trick" substitute for journalism. It's a pretty sweet deal: after obtaining all your clicks with junk journalism, you can then just write another article with the real story (investigated by different site) and get some more. Maybe they should reconsider whether simply transcribing a single FAQ question and doing some speculation is worthy of their "team of expert writers".
Yay....
At least same like PSN.
Well that's a relief. I was so worried that my system would crap out the day my subscription ran out.
Man, if only people had thought to actually read the FAQ as opposed to poorly translating a different one. If only certain news sites didn't spread misinformation. If only...
Nice, one down. Next, native voice-chat.
@Rika_Yoshitake I'll just repeat your message because it really stands true:
"Imagine that, someone took the effort to contact Nintendo and ask them... meanwhile you guys run article after article with speculation for the clicks."
Didn't believe they would actually wipe the save data day one. But good to have the limit clarified.
@Rika_Yoshitake Welcome to the "Fake news"-internet of 2018. Almost NOBODY fact checks anymore. It's just for the clicks and ad-revenue.
Why are some people assuming Nintendo have changed their stance on this, there is nothing to suggest that this wasnt always the case.
@Dalarrun I know right it would be criminal to charge 60 for a half baked service that doesn't even has the basics, so obviously it's gonna improve when they can't even do proper voice chat 😝
@Rika_Yoshitake erm, shouldn't have Nintendo communicated this to the consumer from the start?
It's good to know that this is finally clear. Nintendo's messaging on this is kind of a mess, if you look at the different FAQs:
Germany: FAQ hasn't been updated yet and still says "Details about Cloud Saves will be given at a later date"
UK: "Save data stored with Save Data Cloud cannot be kept outside of the duration of your Nintendo Switch Online membership."
This probably caused all the confusion in the first place because you can interpret it as "cloud saves will be deleted when your membership ends". It doesn't help that it also mentions that your saves will be kept locally and can be reuploaded. It specifically talks about the NES games but if you miss that detail it reinforces the impression that saves will be deleted.
Japan: "Keeping of your cloud saves after the end of your membership can not be guaranteed" (paraphrasing from Google translate)
And finally US:
"If a Nintendo Switch Online membership expires, users won’t be able to access their Save Data Cloud backups. However, Nintendo will allow users who resubscribe within 180 days to access their previous Save Data Cloud backups."
I don't know if this info was always there or if they updated it after talking to IGN.
Anyone breathing a sigh of relief needs to take a long hard look at what they are doing with their lives.
@sanderev I'm a Michael Jackson fan, nobody has checked facts since the late 80's.
Well, that's good to know!!
@DarkKirby I've noticed a trend lately where PR seems to be 'we have a bad idea.. lets announce a worse thing then people will cheer when we say its bot so bad.'
If you stop playing your switch for a year and its dead when you go back to it your saves are gone. That doesnt seem like an issue now but Ive not touched my wii u in 180 days.
The misinformation is Nintendo’s fault. All on them. Easily avoidable.
@subpopz It won't stop the crying....they'll find something new.
@geordie exactly what I was gonna post. Surely the onus is on Nintendo to communicate the things people would want to know about the service BEFORE launch so people don’t speculate wildly.
@GrailUK I agree with that.
@Tulio517 On the other hand, none of this should have ever happened. Nintendo's communication on any issue like this is still horrible. Sorry to be a downer, but I think that is a real issue they need to address. Nintendo Online has been in the making forever and still they could not get the necessary information out there in professional, non-confusing and timely manner. Yeah ... =(
Lol... The comments 🤣🤣😂😂
Grabbing some popcorn and tossing some tissues for the wining toddlers 🤧😭
Well the problem is they tell us everything about smash and how Wii fit trainers facial expressions change in the game but not enough about the online services cloud
@HobbitGamer Nobody has ever debated that side of it. Would be pretty weird to expect otherwise.
@justin233
Why didnˋt some of those journalists ask for clarification? I mean it seems pretty easy for me, as someone form the media, to call Nintendo and ask for clarification. But no, instead we take some vague sentence on Nintendo's FAQ site, interpret it like cloud saves are 100% gone forever and take it as the god of word.🙄
Could Nintendo wrote it clearer, what exactly would happen? Sure, but as a so called journalist, I believe it's also your job to ask for clarification if something isn't 100% clear.
Edit:
I have to correct myself: It seems like, there is different wording depending on which Nintendo site you are. On Nintendo.com it says "not available" while on Nintendo.co.uk it says "can not be kept". So I see where the confusion is coming, my apologies. BUT I still stand to my point, that someone should have ask for clarification.
Okay, this is epic.
just like I always thought. Sony's official stance is also that your save data will be gone immediately when you cancel PS+. In reality they keep it, even for much longer than 6 months.
Trying to start a new angry wave: 180 days is not even half a year. It should be 182 days and 15 hours (average half year considering leap years).
Joke aside, 180 day is really good. I wouldn't have expected mode than 1-2 months.
@GKO900
Some, in fact a lot, of us PC gamers would argue it's criminal to charge $60 to have to pay to play online, get cloud saves, and get good sales when we already get these things for free. At least $20 isn't so hard to stomach. $60 though? You're getting robbed, mate.
@GKO900 you’re saying is wasn’t part of their plan like that’s a fact. All we know is Ninty stated you’d lose access when your subscription expires (obviously) and now the length of time the save remains in cloud in case you resubscribe has been clarified. That is it. STOP making a drama out of nothing. It’s embarassing!
@Dalarrun While I agree that charging us 60 it's criminal at least with all the free games and sales that we get make up for that price (Seriously I save a lot of money thanks to the sales) but with this barebones service you only get what it's literally a paywall for save backups and 30 year old games no more, just because it's cheaper doesn't mean it's better and just wait for them to raise the price
@beazlen1 If it wasn't part of their plan then why they didn't said anything in the direct and state an ambiguous message, they were probably testing the water but they notice the backlash, don't think Nintendo is a super friendly company there's a reason why they lost third parties and why they didn't add local save backups, well easy because they want you to pay for cloud saves
@GKO900 I think I’m more angry at the gaming media and this site in particular for making a drama out of next to nothing. I’m sorry for directing my anger at you. Yes Nintendo should have been clearer from the start. Personally I think they underestimate the importance of getting these little things right and communicating clearly to the gaming public. Inexperience in the online world. They need to catch up fast.
so why didnt the morons announce this when they released the info about service. Or is it due to the back lash they have had to change it. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Now people can stop complaining about this thing that was never that big of an issue to begin with lol
Why not just keep them.
I'm pretty sure my Xbox account details and stuff are still there and could be used now if I bought a new Xbox console, and I haven't used my account in like ten years.
How much of a deal is it to just store a few tens of millions of user account details and the like?
Release no information>check backlash>elevate service to match minimal expectation>change FAQ (TBC)>receive praise>job done-back to deluxe editions
As I said before
i was expecting 30 days or so give or take which subscription you have. but was 180 days for a one month subscription is way too many. however, it makes sense for the 12 month subscription....
@Ralek85 If Nintendo communications ever not suck, it just wouldn't be Nintendo anymore. They've been making no sense since 1983.
It could be worse. We could get gems like Sony's absurd circular gyrations over cross-play
@GKO900
Again, I get the best option out of all of these because I don't have to pay for online multiplayer on Steam. I'm not saying that the service is better than PlayStation Plus, but it is cheaper and that's all that matters. The "free" (but not really) Plus games should be a separate service, at the end of the day they're just forcing people to pay for online and having that as a shiny coat to distract you from it. My subscription is actually only $11 and change because I use the family plan with my fiance and her brother. Cheaper in this case IS better, at least in my opinion.
Safe to say the mass outrage made them decide to reveal it.
But was this always the plan and they didn't "think" it was a selling point (plausible since Nintendo sometimes does seem to understand the common folk) or did they quickly add it?
@justin233 Probably because they didn't think people would overreact and whine so much. Never underestimate the whininess of the internet.
@GKO900 There's nothing that says they changed the process. They clarified what the existing process is. As for why they didn't state it clearly before, see my message above. They likely didn't anticipate the crying based on complete assumption.
@OorWullie Ah, okie. My bad.
@Dalarrun I actually enjoy the free games and think that they help make it a better value. I would gladly pay more for Nintendo Online if they decided to offer features akin to their competitors. I personally don't understand why every one acts like complains about the online service are about price.
But we could go back and forth forever. In the end, I don't mind Nintendo's online so much as it disappoints me that they and their and use the low price as an excuse for crappy features.
@Crillan even if that's true, which is doubtful, Nintendo only has themselves to blame for not explaining their service and for putting that on their website. Which it was. And then it changed.
@NEStalgia Yeah, I guess, but honestly, the 80s are long gone and the times have changed alot. Nintendo needs to do better going into 202X. So far, their failures in this regard have not come back to haunt them (though I would argue, incredibly poor communication was part of the WiiU's failure, and that could have gone really bad, really fast, if not for the 3DS and an incredible loyal fanbase allowing them to bounce right back with the Switch).
Just going on pretending that this state of affairs is set in stone seems foolish and dangerous to me. Kids these days don't all grow up playing Pokemon on their GB/3DS anymore. Nintendo is no longer the only game in town so to speak. I don't want Nintendo go the way of Sega or Atari 10 years from now (partially) because they slept on basic business practices, like reeeallyyy basic.
I mean, taking this just one step further for instance, one cannot help but look at Nintendo Online, at the dusk of 2018, and realize, that this is STILL not a fully formed and integrated competitive ecosystem vis-a-vis PSN, XLive, Steam or Christ ... even Origin.
That is not just a sad state of affairs, but dangerous state of affairs. Nintendo is about to put almost all their eggs in one basket with the Switch, so they should be hellbent on making this count and locking in people for good. Sure, there are other avenues like their mobile efforts and such, but cynical me does not care about Nintendo-The-Mobile-Publisher. In that case, I'd rather have them go the way of Sega ^^
@Crillan Right?! I wish people would stop picking on Nintendo! 😭
@Agramonte local saves won't be deleted in the first place. it is 2 totally different saving places/points. but i do get why some people fear that the local saves will be deleted to.. but no worry it won't even after those 180 days. the only way to delete it is by yourself or if the switch 'dies'.
@MisterDevil no I mean local saves for backups. Like on PS4 - where you can backup to a USB drive regardless if you have PS+ or not.
@Agramonte oh sorry I missunderstood then and yeah... we still can't do backup on a USB drive or so...
This is pretty generous. I didn't expect it.
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