Nintendo Will Break Your Switch 2 If You Run Backed up Games
As it turns out, most companies aren’t thrilled about piracy. That’s understandable: the company exists to make money from its products, and if you use their products without paying for them, that’s a pretty unsustainable business model. However, how companies choose to combat piracy varies widely.
Nintendo, for its part, is pretty hawkish when it comes to piracy. The company will ban your console from playing online if it detects you’re playing an unauthorized (pirated) game. And last month, the company updated its terms of service for Nintendo Account Services , just in time for the launch of the Switch 2. Essentially, the company says that if you do anything to modify your console or software in any way to circumvent Nintendo’s policies and restrictions, Nintendo will not only ban you from playing online, but it also reserves the right to render your console unusable.
It’s pretty intense, and it’s the first time the company has threatened to ban consoles that have been modified or use pirated software. But that’s not a problem for you if you’re not stealing games, right? Well, if you accidentally back up those games in a way Nintendo doesn’t approve of and run those copies on your Switch, that would be considered a violation worthy of being banned. In fact, Nintendo has already taken action against some Switch 2 owners.
Do not use MIG flash cartridge with Switch 2
As Android Authority reports , Nintendo has started blocking Switch 2 consoles that use MIG flash cartridges for any reason. For the uninitiated, MIG flash cartridges are like blank Switch cartridges that allow you to download games from the built-in SD cartridge slot. This means you can use these cartridges to play pirated games directly on the Switch as if they were the real thing, but you can also use them to back up purchased games.
While piracy is alive and well in the tech industry, the latter is actually what people use these cartridges for, and it seems to have worked out just fine for the original Switch. The idea is that each Switch 1 game has a unique ID – if you pirate a game, that means more than one of these IDs is active, so Nintendo knows someone has stolen the game. However, if you back up your legitimate game to a MIG cartridge, the ID is the same, and since only one ID is active, Nintendo lets it slide – at least that’s how things seemed to work with the original Switch.
But that’s not the case with the Switch 2. Take a look at this user’s post on the Switch2hacks subreddit. They claim that their MIG flash cartridge only contained backup copies of games they’d purchased, but after they put the Switch 2 online with the cartridge, Nintendo shut down the console. You can see their now-defunct Switch 2, a console that’s not even two weeks old, in the photo below:
Other users on this Reddit thread shared the same experience — using a MIG flash cartridge got their Switch 2 banned. Interestingly, it appears Nintendo doesn’t ban accounts , just consoles. One user said their Switch OLED can still run online services, which means Nintendo is actually targeting the Switch 2 consoles themselves, rather than the console and account it’s linked to. I imagine the company is happy to let you buy another console for $450 and try to play by the rules again.
Nintendo has been pretty quick to crack down on the practice, even considering how new the Switch 2 is. Just last week, the company behind the MIG flash cartridge launched the technology on the console, after previously cartridges didn’t seem to work at all. My advice? Stay away from them. It’s tempting to reduce the risk of losing your expensive Switch games, but a Switch 2 ban isn’t worth it.
Is it possible to back up Switch 2 games without getting banned?
You can’t back up the games themselves, but you can back up your save data — if you pay for Nintendo Switch Online. If you do, you can highlight the game you want on your console’s home screen, press the – or + button on your controller, select “Save Data Cloud,” select the user in question, then select “Back Up Save Data.”