Whereas that outdated system could possibly be cumbersome to arrange, it really allowed for fairly a little bit of flexibility when it got here to recreation sharing. As Nintendo famous on its official FAQ as recently as last week, two customers might play a single digital recreation buy on the similar time, so long as the Nintendo Account that bought the sport was enjoying on the secondary console (with an energetic Web connection).

However Nintendo’s FAQ rationalization for “the way to play the identical digital recreation on the similar time with completely different Nintendo accounts” has been faraway from the current version of Nintendo’s Switch digital game sharing FAQ. As a substitute is a hyperlink to a new page detailing the Virtual Game Card system. Whereas the brand new FAQ additionally discusses the On-line License function for sharing video games “even when you do not have a digital recreation card loaded,” there is no such thing as a longer any dialogue of the way to entry a single digital recreation on two consoles concurrently.

Ars’ personal testing confirms that attempting to load a digital recreation whereas one other Swap is actively enjoying the identical recreation leads to a “play is being suspended” error on one console. This appears to be true even when one console has a loaded Digital Sport Card for the sport being performed and even when the consoles use completely different Nintendo Accounts from the identical household group.

Gamers can concurrently play completely different video games from the identical digital library on two completely different Swap programs, however provided that not less than a kind of video games is on a loaded Digital Sport Card.

A partial workaround

Gamers who wish to play a single digital recreation bought throughout a number of Swap consoles concurrently can nonetheless use a partial workaround. A Swap console with a Digital Sport Card at the moment loaded needs to be set to Airplane mode (or have Wi-Fi disabled), and the consumer’s On-line License function needs to be enabled for the sport’s authentic purchaser. The primary system will nonetheless be capable to play that Digital Sport Card offline, whereas the On-line License function will enable the identical recreation to be performed on the similar time on a second system.