77
Misleading / clickbait title. The game just needs an update.
Agree, though a system update forcing a game update before you can play an offline game that was working before is very unusual and I can understand some confusion around it.
I wonder if these games with "mandatory" updates do it immediately when you go online even if you haven't played them in a while? Because the Switch 1 only updated games if they were in the front screen or you manually forced an update.
If they don't this gets significantly worse - there's no good way (AFAIK) to track which games on have been updated on the Switch, so keeping your games updated is a massive PITA if you have a big collection as you're effectively forced to go "Check for updates" one by one from time to time. But at least for the previous console you could always play them without updating so there was no major harm in having your games on an old version.
Hopefully it's a rare issue due to Switch 2 / 1 compatibility thing, and we won't have these issues in future. Agree that it will be a PITA otherwise.
So, the Internet is required before you can play it.
"Completely unplayable offline" is not the same as, "needs an update", ffs.
I'm no fan of Nintendo, but that's just sensationalist to the point of being outright lies.
Switch games are not playable if there's an update in the system, until that update is applied. That requires an Internet connection.
Which is why the headline of the post is marked as "misleading" and not completely removed as false information.
You need an update, which requires internet, but after that, the game is "completely playable offline".
Headline is a bit misleading, you just also need to update Wonder and then you can play offline. Headline makes it sound like this is an always-online requirement.
So this isn't news, basically. Surely this is common in the software industry. Software needing an update when firmware also updates. 🤷♂️
Especially since switch 1 games are emulated on 2, and they're still working on it to get the few incompatible games to run. A firmware update a week ago fixed Crypt of the Necrodancer that was unplayable on 2 until then.
Not very surprising that changes in the emulation software might break other stuff. As long as they fix those quickly, I prefer they keep working toward 100% backward compatibility.
This is still yet another point against those people insisting that physical copies mean anything. Right now, it's "just update the game and you can play it". But that's exactly as limiting as a digital copy - you still need an internet connection, an account in good standing, the company's CDN to be online, and everything else to play the game that's "on" your glorified $60 DRM key.
As more Switch 2s get firmware updated, this change means every "physical copy" of Mario Wonder has become a "Game-Key Card" retroactively. The only difference is that the download is slightly smaller for a GKC.
True, but it's worth noting that this only applies to playing it on a Switch 2. If we're talking about an eventual scenario where you lose access to updates someday, at least the carts should still be playable on Switch 1 hardware.
And if this practice continues for Switch 2 games, or was in practice for the Wii U, or etc etc...
It's a bad practice, even if right now there are ways around it for one game. It's a bad practice even if it's only for the current console on the current firmware. It turned a physical copy someone bought into a keycard. I'm of the opinion that all physical console games have been keycards since the day they started having day 1 patches, but at least that argument has the reasonable counterpoint of "you can still play the buggy incomplete v1.0 that's on the cart/disc, that makes it better than Switch 2 Game Key Cards, which are better than account-locked Digital Games".
This is direct and complete proof that your physical copy means nothing. The company can still restrict your access whenever they want to. The Switch 1 still gets firmware updates, after all, and firmware updates can't be rolled back. The physical copy guarantees fuck all in the face of every preservation concern that's a criticism of digital downloads. DRM-free digital and piracy are the only trustworthy methods of preservation.
FWIW, this likely just has to do with backwards compatibility fixes, since S2 is software emulation rather than hardware. I don't think they're likely to go back and intentionally restrict anything on Switch 1 through new firmware updates.
I agree that in an era of patches, physical copies are becoming increasingly imperfect from a preservation perspective, but I hesitate to say they mean nothing. Depends on the game really, and how complete it is at launch.
Correction: Switch 2 Back-compat is not emulation. It is a compatibility layer in the same vein that the Steam Deck runs Windows games despite running on Linux.
For whatever reason, a game company can make your "physical copy" require a digital download to function. If a company decides they don't want you to play a game (or version) anymore, it being on a cart or disc is not insurance against it.
This is what no consumer protections on digital products looks like.
Its ok, we are just rolling over and taking it. Why own things when we could pay more to rent?
Because nothing beats consumption in a dying world.
This is how steam has been for like a decade and people have been rolling over and taking it for years.
This sounds more like a bug to me, not deliberate manipulation by nintendo. But the fact that it can even happen by accident is very dissapointing
Games can have bugs crashing them on startup or any point of gameplay too. That's just reality
It's a much younger reality than videogames themselves, though. That's the point. Especially for console games. Sure, patches have been a thing since even 360 days, but games outright not functioning without updates is much newer as any kind of norm.
It's basically a new console. Consoles that have backwards compatibility used to have updates in such case sometimes.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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