Let me sell my digital licenses before we talk about them like they‘re comparable to physical media.
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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So it's the overly complicated version of a system that's on more sane platforms like Steam? Ok.
Exactly ! Steam families are now dead simple, whereas this new oh-so-Nintendo method seems as janky as it gets.
It does have one standout feature that Steam families do not though: ability to play shared games even when offline.
Only recently has steam gotten better at this. I've got my account, my kids account, and a 3rd account that owns games we may want to play, so that it doesn't tie up either of our main accounts or if we want to have a guest use it. (all are shared to each other). Until last year, it was not super easy sharing them all, lots of logins, authorizations, etc.
You can lend games on steam ???
Family sharing I presume. I'm not entirely familiar with the scope of the service myself as I've only just set up family sharing with my child. But when I did, they had a huge catalog of games in their own steam account as a result.
Yup! Not all, but most. Some with high levels of cheaters block family sharing, like RUST
Even though this is an annoying DRM layer, I do like the innovation attempted here.
Back in the day, you’d hand your disc to your friend and then they’d hand it back to you some time later. Digital has given us a lot more freedom in how we game, but the ability to share had been removed. This at least seems to be offering a solution, at least for those who either don’t want to or are unable to just Arr! the games.
All they need is to remove the asinine local connection piece, and make the timeframe longer.
I do like the innovation attempted here
How is this innovation, though?
It's a specific type of DRM/sharing scheme, but it's not really innovative.
you should be able to use games within your family completely unlimited anyway.
I would understand the local connection requirement if that was for sharing with people outside your family. that would make it similar to sharing a game with a friend you know in person. without that the floodgates would be open to sharing games with literally anyone online.
How would you make it so you can only share games with your family? As in what technical definition of "family" would you use that can't include your friends?
apple does it, and i think Google too. everyone you add to your "family" must share the same payment method. so naturally you will limit that to only people you highly trust.
For child accounts the trust might extend to blocking purchases in the general case and having the kids send purchase requests to the parent for approval.
Of course this leaves the child account restricted is such a manner it would be unappealing if there wasn't an actual parent-child relationship IRL.
Interesting, does that mean there is just one primary account and to be part of a family group with it you essentially can't have your own account or purchases?
For Google Play the requirements are:
- the family manager is over 18 and has a payment method on file (they manage the family wallet).
- the family members are in the family managers country, (and if under 13 the account is created by the manager).
I only have direct experience with managing a kid under 13, in that case I have created the account for him and never entered a payment method on his account. For any purchases he wants to make via the "family wallet" it needs my direct approval, which can be granted by using an app on my device or directly entering my password onto his. After either of us has made a purchase we have a "share with family library" toggle that can share the title with the other family member. Note that this only applies to direct title purchases from the store, if a feature is locked behind IAP it can't be shared. We have his accompanied locked so he needs my approval for any purchases (including free apps) but this is not required by the platform.
For child accounts the family manager can choose between requiring approval for each of the following on each child account:
- All content
- All purchases using the family payment method
- Only in-app purchases
- No approval required
I presume the for adult family members the family manager only has control of the Family Wallet but I don't have direct experience to confirm.
It depends on how it works, 14 days and then the friend has to buy it or renewed every 14 days. If it is the latter and if it eventually goes online (which I think it will with the online subscription) it is a way, not the best way but a way, to stop scammers from building up massive stolen libraries because, unlike piracy, these games would actually be getting stolen from whoever lent it out since they can't play them. If it is 14 days and then the friend has to buy the game, it's a stupid limit.
I think it's going to be mostly school kids sharing games with their friends, like their parents before them but digitally.
Its still missing physical object's killer app: permanent license transferability.
With physical objects I can buy them from others, give them to friends, etc and that transfer can be permanent.
All of this lend and automatically return is just a mechanism to block permanent license transfer.
I think that is a good thing. There are many reasons to dislike Nintendo, but they had no pressure to do this due to the lack of competition on their platform from other stores and manufacturers. 14 days is more than enough to finish most games or at least give them a try before buying.
So I'm torn on this until I can test it.
Right now you can absolutely share digital games. You do need to have your account logged in on both machines and only the one where your "main" account sits can play the games offline.
This seems both easier and harder? There are now arbitrary time limits and per-game activations, which seems like a massive mess. Before the only limit was that a game couldn't be played in two places at once and that secondary consoles needed to stay online.
But conversely, the "main account" thing was annoying for a portable, so if you shared with someone that carried their console around outside the house it kinda required giving THEM the main account with all the games and keeping the secondary for yourself. This is a very parent-like situation to be in. So... that's better?
The worry here is that this sure seems like setting the groundwork to give up on physical media altogether without messing with the way people use Nintendo portables, and that is a bad thing overall. Given Nintendo's dumb, litigious approach towards these things they're getting no benefit of the doubt from me in this area.
Its a strategic time for this regime to be implemented. With a sequel console on the horizon a lot of households are going to become 2 switch families soon. Anything to make customers more comfortable spending money will speed the uptake.
For PlayStation I liked they way they let each user nominate 1 primary PS4 and 1 primary PS5. They both could play the PS4 library without restriction so the old console was a perfect hand-me-down.
In comparison for Xbox they have maintained that the whole platform is homogeneous with each account only allowed one home console at a time be it One or Series.
This household will be migrating to steamdeck or equivalent. We've invested too much into PC games and moving our main desktops to Linux, it only seems right. I'm tired of supporting companies that don't care about us, only our money, and even then slap you when you're not looking.
I don't think you can share with friends? Only if you have a Family account and all the Switches are signed into the same Family.
I don't get why they needed a 14 day limit. Sounds half baked to me. Steam, although with its own limitations, still does a better job at game sharing.
Because if they don't then you can essentially just give a game away, and that means less sales
Hooray, new DRM?
Sounds like it's no more DRM than the limits of a physical cartridge, right?
You have to authenticate online on both ends, and it maxes out at two weeks, so no.
The two weeks are only for sharing across accounts in a family, if you're using the same account across two devices there isn't a time limit. You could already play your games on both but before the secondary device needed to connect to the Internet every time you launched the game, and now it's just when loading.
Hey, I'm sure it solves a problem for people, but the easier solution is still just the absence of DRM, as much as Nintendo would not like to do it, and it introduces exactly the kind of complexity that Sony mocked 12 years ago.
DRM poop.