Nintendo Switch Game Sharing Is Now More Difficult

Summary

Switch owners can no longer play the same game online on two consoles simultaneously.
The old loophole was replaced with Virtual Game Cards, which treat digital games as physical cards and require them to be "ejected" before they can be played on a different device.
It's still possible to play the same copy of a game on two devices if the non-owner console is offline.

Nintendo Switch owners can no longer share games between devices in a way that allows them to play two online titles simultaneously. The change making game sharing more difficult was rolled out as part of the latest Switch update.

Up until now, it was possible to play a digital copy of a Switch game online on a device designated as a primary console while the owner was simultaneously playing it via a secondary console. The recent announcement of the Switch 2's GameShare feature suggested that this long-standing option would be shuttered.

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By Dominik Bošnjak

Those expectations have now been proven correct, with Eurogamer reporting that the loophole has been closed. The change was implemented as part of the latest Switch operating system update, which rolled out on April 29. The latest OS version introduces support for Virtual Game Cards, which are meant to simplify the process of transferring digital titles between consoles. Since the new system treats digital licenses as physical games, it requires users to "eject" them from one system before making them playable on another.

It's Still Possible To Play a Switch Game on 2 Consoles Simultaneously—Just Not Online

While Nintendo's Virtual Game Cards are inherently incompatible with the old trick for sharing titles between two systems, it's still possible to do so while avoiding them. The new update added a "Use Online Licenses" option—found at the bottom of the Profile menu—that can be turned on to allow the console to play titles even without a Virtual Game Card. A notable restriction that applies to this use case is that it only works for offline play, and only if the same game license isn't currently used on a different system that's connected to the internet.

In other words, without a Virtual Game Card, only the owner of the Nintendo Account used to purchase any given title will be able to play it online. The new "Use Online Licenses" option found in the Switch settings menu does not interfere with Virtual Game Cards in any way. Some vocal Switch owners seem to be disappointed with this change, having said as much on social media. Many of the current complaints seems to be centered on the fact that a notable portion of Nintendo's customers were used to playing a single game copy with friends and family members at the same time—something that's no longer possible on the Switch OS version 20.0.0.

Apart from shaking up game-sharing features, the latest version of the Switch OS also revamps the eShop. The "Current Offers" and "Charts" tabs now sort titles based on the past three days' worth of sales data rather than downloads, thus doing a better job at showcasing what's been selling well lately at the expense of free-to-play titles and shovelware.

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