Topic: No backup on saves? That’s insane.

I’m sure I’m late to the party on this, but I’ve only had my Switch for a few weeks.

For the most part, I love the console. However, I just found out today that game saves are stored on the console and cannot be transferred to an SD card.

This is absolutely mind-blowing. I can’t fathom how Nintendo could be this far behind on common sense implementation. The console has been out for a year and people are losing 200-hour game saves?

I don’t have the words to adequately express how mind-numbingly stupid, disappointing, and unacceptable this is. How can a company be so out of touch with reality?

This needs to be fixed yesterday. Unbelievable.

/rantoff

Well. I agree.

Nintendo is living in a distant past. I'm somewhat hopeful for change once they start charging us for online.

Maybe it'll be implemented when they also turn on the Home button light.

Such a baffling company, that's why I love them.

But you're right, it is a problem. Hopefully they drop some major update around E3, and this is included in it.

This is Nintendo we are talking about why is everyone so surprised?

Maybe because their last three consoles had the ability to move data from and to the sd card and even saving back-ups in a computer.

And stored saves on the cart

And the Gamecube let you copy game data to another memory card as long as the name of the game doesn't have Pokemon in it.

Animal crossing towns/character data couldn't be cloned either

Which was also a decent attack vector for hacking and thus piracy. That's why you can't backup saves. They'll be controlling the backup of saves through cloud saves backup

I agree. Just as you, for the most part I love Switch. I absolutely love it it is great and exciting. But there are some issues that are very annoying. I hope that Nintendo do something about it.

It should have been Day 1. Why we are happy to wait for over a year for a full online service and a way to back up data is beyond me. If this was Sony, it would be unacceptable. Nintendo has "old persons" rights or something which enables them to get away with anything.

Just adding to this a bit more, I can't link to the sources because it's definitely against the ToS of this forum. But you can google to verity if you want. The Wii U, 3DS and Wii all had save game exploits on them of one kind or another. Eyeballing a list of 3DS exploits specifically about 3/4 of the exploits are save game exploits. Most of the rest are web browser exploits. So if anything Nintendo is extremely in touch with reality and are locking the Switch down pretty hard.

Now don't get me wrong, they need to have some way to backup save data. Cloud saves when (not if) they come will be far better than any previous solution. Because lets be honest here, you could backup your Wii U/Wii/3DS saves but how many did you actually backup? And even if you personally do how often did you do it and how many people don't? Cloud saves would be automatic therefore more likely not only be upto date but exist in the first place.

I'm hoping that they will fix this when the paid online comes in

@Bunkerneath Clouds saves will most likely come with online. PS Plus gets you cloud storage so it only makes sense for Nintendo to offer it as well. Assuming Nintendo has that sense

I absolutely agree that cloud saves are the optimal solution. They’re the industry standard. They were the industry standard a decade ago.

I also understand the concern regarding hacks, especially in the context of online, multiplayer titles such as Splatoon, Mario Kart, and so forth.

Having said that, it is beyond insane that a year after the launch of the Switch, Nintendo thinks it’s acceptable to say “sorry you lost your game saves, we’re trying to figure it out.” As another poster stated, this shouldn’t have made it past quality control for launch.

“People can lose all of their game saves.” “Oh, yeah that has to be fixed before we launch.” Any other conversation on this subject would have been nonsensical. ANY solution (SD cards) would have been better than no solution at all.

Here’s hoping I, and the rest of you, don’t lose all of our progress before cloud saves happen.

EDIT: I absolutely backup my saves on every other console or system. Always. It’d be insane not to. I’m surprised by the assertion that it’s an exception to the norm. It’s most definitely not. Very few people would be content with the idea of losing their saves when it could have been avoided.

My biggest concern is that not even Nintendo Support have the ability to transfer saves wirelessly - if the USB type-C port on the bottom of the Switch gets damaged, your saves are doomed...and that just really isn't on in this day and age.

I can understand the argument that perhaps they want to clamp down on people tampering with save files etc - but to not even allow their own Support teams to access those files remotely is just...backwards. Having customers put hundreds of hours in to games - only to risk losing ALL of their progress if one key component fails is unbelievably poor and needs addressing ASAP!

They should at least have a soft roll-out of the 'cloud' function, even if it's only initially accessible by those who work for Nintendo Support, just to stop that from happening (and hopefully roll it out to all users in time) - at least that would give customers confidence that, aside from in the most extreme of circumstances, Nintendo themselves would be able to rescue their data...it's just so, so poor in its current state

Considering the System RAM storage is 28gb now I am down to 19gb this can be a problem. I do hope later System Updates cures this problem and permits game data to move to the microsd card. I have now a 400gb card and would like to move my saves over to that card.

I agree, it's ludicrous. Cloud saving should have been there Day 1.

I totally agree this is something Nintendo should have implemented. However gamers for years went without backup saves. There are risks involved but we know how to be careful until Nintendo wakes up...

Right? Right... ? I hope.

I guess the difference is that back then you would lose your data in a per game basis, since the data was stored in the cartridge.