This Christmas, I Learned Yet Another Reason Digital Games Suck

Don’t you hate when you assume something works one way, and then it doesn’t?

Let’s say my little sisters are getting a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, and I have several games that I really only play with them.

Surely I can simply download those games onto their Switch, and have everything be fine, right? I wouldn’t assume I could play Mario Kart with them online at the same time, and I may have to delete it off my Switch to download it onto theirs, but really what’s the problem?

The problem is for them to play Mario Kart, I can’t play: any game that’s downloaded from the eShop, is physical but has downloaded DLC, or connects to the internet. If I’m doing one of those things on my Switch, they can’t play any game I bought. And THEY have to be online to play it, meaning they can’t play on long car rides, or if the wifi is down.

And, ok, I understand that there should be some limitations. I know why I can’t just buy the game once and then download it onto a bunch of different devices (even though that would be very fun). If I had a physical cartridge of Mario Kart, then I wouldn’t be able to have it on multiple systems at the same time.

But surely Nintendo has the technological capacity to determine that the game has only been downloaded on one system. Does there have to be this whole “primary vs secondary” console brouhaha? 

If this were a physical game cartridge, I could just give it to my sisters. That very basic functionality isn’t inherent to the fact that it is physical, so why can’t I just let my sisters play it and delete it off my system? 

Certainly if Netflix can keep track of how many things are downloaded on different devices, so can Nintendo.

The whole scenario just bums me out. It would be a very simple thing to make this easier and let me share games I like with my little sisters. Nintendo bills itself as the family company with the family consoles, so sharing games in this very limited way should be simple.

I’m not asking for an infinitely replicable version of the game, I’m just asking that the game that I own be able to be downloaded onto just my sisters’ Switch without preventing me from playing something else. 

Sure, I’d love it if we could bring back the equivalent of DS Download play and we could all play Mario Kart on our separate Switches with only one game, but I understand that’s pie in the sky.

I love playing games, and I was excited to have the chance to share that with my sisters and make things a bit easier on my parents, since games are expensive nowadays, especially as they streak towards $70. But I can't, and for what reason? So that Nintendo can make slightly more money off of this because now for my sisters to play Mario Kart on their own, someone has to buy it again? Is that really more money than you’d get letting my sisters play a bunch of games I already have, thus maybe encouraging them to buy more of their own?

Well, this is how Nintendo’s decided to do it, so I assume the answer is yes, it does work out that way economically.

But it’s also objectively a worse experience for users, and I’m of the personal belief that the world does not have to be more annoying just so some people can make a little more money.