Game Informer has noticed that a number of other games that are due to be released later this year on the Nintendo Switch won’t support cloud saves which is one of the features of the paid Nintendo Switch Online service which is due to go live later this month. These games include Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu and Eevee along with Dark Souls Remastered. We already covered that it doesn’t look as though Splatoon 2 will feature cloud saves either. The publication has also noticed that Dead Cells, FIFA 19, and NBA 2K19 won’t feature cloud saves either.
More Nintendo Switch Games Including Pokemon Let’s Go And Dark Souls Won’t Support Cloud Saves
These news have not been very good.
Looks like cloud saves really were an afterthought reaction to the bad press. Games that were already a good deal in on development probably won’t be supported. Save systems are a surprisingly tricky bit of coding, so retrofitting a new one in isn’t the easiest.
Changing a save system could be annoying in some games, though what I’m really wondering is what the cloud backup system looks like, because if all we’re talking about is syncing a few pre-defined save files to a server that really shouldn’t be a problem. What crazy shenanigans did Nintendo come up with that it can’t just support every game?
Right, so on the surface you’d think that it’s easy. Take the save file, move it to online storage. But keep in mind, Switch games don’t seem to have an easily accessible, transferable save file, or we’d be able to transfer them to the SD card, create backups, or they’d be easily recoverable by Nintendo during repairs. Since none of those things are true, I have to assume they’re doing something weird.
As a developer, changing the save system in games is trivial. It doesn’t matter where it’s stored as long as you can get the data. This is just another bad decision on Nintendo’s part that could be fixed by updating their APIs to retrieve the data from the correct location so that the developer doesn’t have to do anything. Otherwise, it’s up to the developer to update their code to grab the save data from the cloud storage which is again very trivial. The majority of the work is already done by the developer with importing the data into the game.
I don’t know how the Switch stores save games, but I would assume that it doesn’t have any standardized way, that the developer can basically save it however they want. Might be a plain text file or multiple files or an SQLite database or whatever, presumably in a pre-defined space on the hard drive, similar to how mobile systems work. Without a standardized way the Switch can’t simply upload all files in this “app folder”, because anything could be in there. Cloud Saves were presumably an after thought, and if a game created tons of garbage in its folder Nintendo wouldn’t want to just upload it all to their servers. That shouldn’t mean that a game couldn’t easily be adjusted though, and I would expect that developers would jump on it, updating their games with whatever small adjustment is necessary to tell the Switch (what) to backup. If that’s not as easy, we have to assume that Nintendo did something weird that actually does force devs to change their save system, and that might be a problem.
Changing a save system is doable, of course, but potentially annoying, like I said. Imagine you used some elaborate multi-file, multi-directory structure where you save to from various locations in your code and Nintendo wanted to have one file per save file or something. Refactoring that takes a little time, you’d have to rethink your entire saving strategy.
I think there’s a good chance that Nintendo messed up the Cloud Save system, that there’s *something* in it that makes it difficult to use.
This online stuff seems crappier and crappier by the minute…
What’s even the point of having cloud saves if most of the games won’t even feature them lol
Lol dam let’s hope hello Kitty cruisers supports it. If not all is lost
is nintendo stupid or do they just like to pissing people off.
Neither. They are totalitarian control freaks that like to enslave their customers and 3rd party partners. Nintendo has always been this way and even the failure that is Wii U wasn’t enough to tell them to knock the bullshit off.
This is getting a bit ridiculous. What’s the point of adding this feature and locking it behind a pay wall if so many games don’t use it?
}{ Pokemon would allow for an easy cloning glitch by downloading an older save after trading a pokemon to another account… Not very surprising on that count… }{
So we’re supposed to trade away our Pokemon? Or keep bonds with unevolved Pokemon (Pokemon with trade evolutions such as Kadabra, Scyther, Graveler, etc.)? Or simply NOT catch them all (even if you’re only going after the new ones)?
Splatoon 2 would also allow people to abuse ranked battle
wth is the point in cloud saves if half the games don’t support them? really, really stupid. horrible business strategy.
Wait are you salty that non-subscribers won’t have any drawbacks to not subscribing or that you won’t get to use cloud saving on your favorite games?
This is even dumber than them not allowing video capture for select games (even as time went on).
I’ve been wanting to save clips from Xenoblade Chronicles 2… but for some reason it doesn’t support it! I wouldn’t mind too much if it was a THIRD PARTY title, but Xenoblade Chronicles is a NINTENDO EXCLUSIVE!!!
I’ve STILL yet to hear if there will be an update where players can FINALLY save clips in that game.
“YOUR COMMENT IS AWAITING MODERATION.”
Uh… Why?
I agree I hate that video capture is only in select games and not only that but when the feature does arrive to these games it’s already too late and you’ve finished the game so there’s no point.
Is it true that those games doesn’t have Cloud save?
….
I don’t see any reason why those two games would need it.
Very conflicting article here, basically stating the opposite:
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/09/rumour_cloud_saves_will_be_supported_on_all_existing_switch_games_by_default
Have a read.
You’re counteracting this article with a RUMOR?
People are blaming Nintendo for this but don’t they realize this technically is on FromSoftware and Gamefreak? It’s as I said before, Nintendo don’t have a lot of power when it comes to 2nd and 3rd party games, it’s all on the developers. I mean sure with Splatoon 2 it is on Nintendo, I’ll grant you that but with this it’s not.
Shhh… You can’t disrupt the circle jerk. At the very least we should just wait for an official statement.
Yeah let’s instead build an echo chamber that only praises Nintendo that’s more logical.
Stop the bullshit damage control you can cloud save dark souls games on PS4 but not on the switch. Yeah blame from software and not Nintendo.
+Phazoonn
I gotta love how people like you automatically assume that when someone defends Nintendo in 1 area you assume we defend them entirely. Here’s a newsflash for you; not all of us are like this. I’m actually against Nintendo not allowing Cloud Saving for Splatoon 2 and I’ve criticized them for their terrible control of amiibo restocks. Oh yeah, and I’ve criticized them for Content ID Claiming YouTube Videos from fans that only want to support them.
Also, just because Cloud Saving on PS4 works for Dark Souls doesn’t automatically mean Nintendo is the 1 preventing this. For all we know, FromForward could have some sort of reason for not wanting to do it so to immediately blame Nintendo is very moronic.
You don’t know that for sure. For all we know, Nintendo is charging 3rd party developers/publishers to use Nintendo’s cloud save system for an unreasonable price. If that were to be the case, it comes back to being squarely on Nintendo, making it totally their fault. Considering how controlling Nintendo can be, I wouldn’t be surprised if this were to end up being the case. Of course, even if that were to be the case, Nintendo won’t admit it and 3rd parties will probably be too worried (for whatever reason) to say anything. (Most likely under a very strict and controlling NDA if this were to be true.)
But it’s just a theory… A Game Theory..!
+Infinite Ridley
That is a fair point so yes I agree it may not entirely be on those companies either. The lesson we can take from this is when it comes to 2nd and 3rd party developers,we just can’t point fingers as we know very little. For all we know, it could be all of them! Maybe Gamefreak and Fromsoftware had a discussion with Nintendo and they all agreed not to have Cloud Storage, the truth is, we simply do not know.
So when you lose your LGPE save data, you’re fucked.
Less reason to get this game.
So… they say we could store data in cloud storage… and yet most games WON’T/DON’T EVEN SUPPORT IT!?
I was willing to defend Nintendo’s Online service for it’s cloud saves… but this is DUMB!!!
Hopefully Smash Ultimate will have cloud saves. It would suck to unlock every character, stage and song just to have your Switch break and lose all of your progress.
Rest in pieces, digital Switch users.
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While it sucks, I can see the exact reason why they’re doing it and I’m kinda surprised they thought about it. With Pokemon, Dark Souls, and Splatoon 2, you can easily abuse the cloud saves. Like with Pokemon, save to cloud and then I could trade away a bunch of Pokemon to another person and redownload from the cloud and have them all back. Or Dark Souls, you have the ability to drop your items in someone else’s world, do that and just redownload your save to have them all back, hell I think they had this exact problem before on the Playstation. And Splatoon 2, you can max out your rank real easily if you back up your save, go into ranked, and if you win you back up your save again, if you lose you download your cloud save. And just hit the max easily, it would be repetitive but it would work. But games like Mario, Zelda, etc wouldn’t have these issues so cloud saves are fine. Now don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have the cloud saves, but it makes sense cause you could literally cheat this way.
I’ve never used cloud saves for anything in my life. You people must really treat your systems like crap if they’re breaking all the time. Either way, this is dumb regardless. Then again, for some of these games, it makes sense. As cloud saving could be used to exploit many things.
Everything breaks eventually and right now any games that are not supported on cloud saves are at risk of losing everything should their system break and is impossible to repair. Splatoon 2 is a game that requires a TON of grinding so for someone to lose all that progress for something that isn’t their fault is horrible.
Sure, if you’re incredibly ignorant to the safety of your system and you are clearly treating it in a way that will break it easily then sure, you deserve to lose your data but sometimes stuff just breaks and it’s not the fault of the owner at all.
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I swear to fuck! If Super Smash Bros Ultimate ends up being one of these games that doesn’t use cloud saves and it turns out cloud saves don’t work for games that are online or have an online component like it was on Wii and Wii U, I am so not putting up with that bullshit a 3rd fucking time.
Maybe I shouldn’t get too comfy having my new Switch in case this shit gets any worse. (Watch it turn out cloud saves is done by way of their god damn Nintendo Switch Online app, making it to where if you don’t have a smartphone with said app, you can’t use cloud saves.)
This is sadly just typical Nintendo bullshit. It’s a shame people are damage controlling this. “But people can abuse cloud saves!” People can do it on Sony, Microsoft, and PC/Steam, too, but you don’t see those guys pulling bullshit like this! I’m sorry but you are a sucker for defending Nintendo. Even if you aren’t a fanatic/fanboy of Nintendo, you’re still a sucker (that includes you, too, Christopher James.) It’s like defending ruling your people with an iron fist because they might (and will) do horrible things in some vain attempt to protect them but ultimately end up doing the very horrible things you are trying to stop them from doing to themselves while at the same time the people still manage to do horrible things to each other even without you doing it to them first. All you do is make things WORSE, not better.