this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Steam sells non-transferable lifetime licenses to each game you "buy", that let you play it on one PC at a time but never transfer it to anyone else, even as part of an inheritance after your death.
If you have a family there is a "sharing" plan which allows you to let family members also play some of the games in your library, but not at the same time.
Nintendo is imposing a bit more ceremony if you want to share digital games each time you share them, but the essential "one device at a time" nature is the same that steam imposes.
I think you can argue if Steam does the whole sharing thing better than Sony or Microsoft. On Playstation and Xbox you can just by one copy of a game, but play it simultaniously with someone else, but it seems like that's limited to one other console (setting the home console).
On Steam you need one copy for every accout playing the game, but you can have 6 accounts in your family, and unlimited devices. Without family share, your own account can only play on one device at a time, but then, why not just make a new Steam account and join a family.
The virtual game cards from Nintendo are also like Steam, since they need one game copy for each player, but also only on one device.
Seems to me like Nintendo is not as good as the others, when it comes to sharing digital games. Sharing physical is of course still possible and easy on console.
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.