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Nintendo Switch Online may delete cloud saves if subscriptions are canceled

Further, if you don't check in every 7 days, you may lose access to your offline NES Classics downloads.

Brittany Vincent

September 14, 2018 11:35 AM

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Following yesterday's Nintendo Direct, Nintendo has made several bits of information surrounding its Nintendo Switch Online service available for folks to pore over. Among some of the information you can glean from its official FAQ section on the Nintendo website is apparent confirmation that, if you cancel your Nintendo Switch Online account, you will likely lose access to your cloud saves.

Additionally, if you'd like to continue to play your NES Classic titles offline, you'll need to make sure you connect to the internet via Switch at least once every seven days.

"Save data stored via the Save Data Cloud backup is available for as long as you have an active Nintendo Switch Online membership," reads the official FAQ. While this sounds pretty definitive on the matter, another area states that Nintendo is "unable to guarantee" that the data will still be available for an "extended period of time" after the membership has ended. Nintendo appears to be using some very strange language here -- of course, this could stem from Japanese translation or localization issues with the wording.

Essentially, if your cloud saves are important to you, you'll want to make sure you don't let your Nintendo Switch Online membership lapse. On PlayStation 4, cloud saves remain for six months, and Xbox One cloud saves simply don't require an Xbox Live Gold subscription. It's unknown why Nintendo decided to go with this particular business model, as we can't imagine folks are going to be too pleased with this direction.

You can check out the FAQ yourself for additional information ahead of the service's official debut on September 18, when you'll have to make the decision to pick up a subscription or not. It's only $20 for the year, which is cheaper than Xbox One or PlayStation 4's online services, but there are still quite a few wrinkles, it seems, that need to be ironed out.

Brittany Vincent

Senior Editor

Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!