this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
96 points (94.4% liked)
Games
37350 readers
2199 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here and here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If we still need to buy one copy of a gamer per simultaneous player,.then the rest of the differences are just ceremony.
Nothing indicates that moving a Nintendo digital card requires uninstalling the game locally. It just, like steam, does a DRM check to see if it's being played elsewhere.
Like I said, to me, the differences are not as cut and dry, it depends on you situation.
As for the virtual game card, Nintendo actually uses eject, load, and borrow in their article, so it sounds to me it's basically like a physical game you have to move between consoles, not just simple check.
Ceremony can be a PITA,.no argument here.
But I would be shocked if Nintendo made a digital "eject" erase anything on the local console.
Yeah, it would be insane if the game's also uninstalled, but that second system still needs to be at hand or someone needs to "eject" it. It's a really dumb system.
I am not 100% sure on this but i belive that you could buy 1 game and then share it with your family members on switch and everyone (except the owner) could play it at the same time. This is now changed with virtual cards and only 1 person can play a game at any one time. Note that i do only own one switch so I am not a 100% sure about this.
Steam lets anyone in family play anything except playing the same game as the owner iirc. So it is very friendly to sharing whereas just a year ago or something the owner of the game you wanted to "borrow" had to not be playing anything for you to be able to play it.
Nintendo made sharing less friendly. Steam made it more friendly. Am I wrong?
As I understand it, switch 1 digital games are console-bound, but you can migrate your whole console to a new device (such as if your switch breaks.). This was terrible and unfriendly, and why almost all of my family's switch games are physical.
I doubt "share once and let everyone play but the owner" was an intentional promise from Nintendo, but I'd have no trouble believing a tale about their DRM checks leaving open a hole like that.
Not true. Switch licensing works the exact same way as Playstation licensing. All accounts on your "main" console can play the same digital game, even offline. Your account can play digital games on any console as long as it's logged in and connected to the Internet.
I think the only thing that's worse with the new Steam system is that everyone has to be in the same country.