Summary
Nintendorolled out its 20.0.0 update for theSwitchthis morning. One of the more significant updates for the console in recent memory with many of the features preparing for theSwitch 2’s arrival. That includes the new Virtual Game Cards feature shown off earlier this year. However, the rollout of the new feature appears to have limited those who share an account from playing games online together.
Now that the update is live, Switch owners can treat their digital purchases the same way as physical ones. If you own a digital copy of a game, you can lend it to someone else by virtually loading it into their console. It effectively negates the need for other Switches to be connected to a primary account if you own multiple consoles, particularly handy for gaming families, but an issue with the update has already been discovered.
As reported and detailed by VGC, Switch owners have quickly discovered that now the Virtual Game Card feature is live, Switch owners with a primary account who have secondary accounts attached can no longer play games online together. Previously, if someone was signed into an account’s primary console on a secondary account, someone else could then sign into the primary account on a different console and the two of them could play online together.
The Virtual Game Card Update Is Live
But It May Have Replaced A Way You Could Play Digital Games With Others Online
The ability to exchange digital games between consoles means the primary/secondary account system isn’t really a thing anymore, and that means the ability to play digital games online together in the way detailed above is now a thing of the past. Once the Virtual Game Card has been “ejected” from one Switch and “inserted” into another, it won’t be playable on that original Switch again until the game is returned.
you’re able to still play the same game at the same time provided one of the Switches is offline, but it’s a bit of a faff. If the console with the card is offline, the second Switch can use the game’s online license, even though the virtual card is still being used by the other, offline console. However, as soon as the Switch with the card reconnects, the second console can no longer play the game.
That obviously doesn’t fix the playing together online issue either since one of the consoles needs to be offline for the workaround to work
We are only hours removed from this update going live, so it’s unsurprising that there are teething problems. What isn’t clear is whether these problems were intentional, or if Nintendo didn’t consider the implications and now people have discovered the problem, it’s working on a fix.
For now, if you want to play, say,Mario Kart 8 Deluxeonline with other people in your house using multiple consoles, you will need to own multiple copies of the game. On the bright side, you may now transfer your digital games to those other Switches using the new Virtual Game Card feature.
