When it comes to Nintendo Switch Online and its games, one thing that’s always worried us is the future stability of the service. After all, you’re merely renting access to the games available on the service, rather than buying them outright like you did on the Virtual Console.
As a result, we’ve always been left worried about whether games would disappear in future. Whether well-regarded and hard to license games would only be available for a limited amount of time, before vanishing back to where they came.
And now it seems our worst fears may have been justified. Why? Because now the first ever game is being removed from the Switch Online service, with the SNES football title Super Soccer due to be removed from the SNES Online app on March 28th of this year. Here’s the translated announcement from Nintendo, courtesy of OatMealDome:
[NSO – SNES]
Super Soccer will be removed from the service on Mar 28 at 1 am UTC.
While this has only been announced in Japan so far (as of this tweet), the game is also available in the West, so it might get removed over here as well. https://t.co/HVr9RpGdAq
— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) February 28, 2025
As you can see, it currently only affects the Japanese version of the service. However, given the game is available in all regions (and likely has similar licensing challenges in those areas as well), it’s probable that it’ll be nuked from the service worldwide in much the same way in good time.
So, for the first time in the service’s life the library available is going down, and it’s only likely to occur again soon.
Since as much as we hate to say it, semi obscure sports games like Super Soccer are hardly the only titles with licensing agreements and copyright complexities. No, many other third games do.
And the Switch Online apps are full of those types of games. Hence while Super Soccer’s removal is hardly the end of the world, it does raise the possibility that actual fan-favourites might go the same way. That in future, titles like Rare’s N64 releases or the Pokémon spinoffs might be delisted, along with God knows how much of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive app and its library.
This right here is why I don’t trust renting. Why the idea of cloud gaming and digital-only consoles will never appeal to me. Why platforms and walled gardens online generally annoy me as a concept.
Because you don’t own anything there. Your access to the things you bought or rented only lasts as long as the owners of the service want it to, and no more.
And it can be taken away for any reason whatsoever at any time. Company gets bought out? It’ll likely stop working. Company goes into administration? It’ll likely stop working. Greedy businesspeople want to charge extra for the same thing you already bought access to? You guessed it, it’ll likely stop working.
That’s not even getting into social issues either. Nintendo is thankfully pretty neutral in this regard, since the only thing they seem to care about is making games, but who’s to say other companies are the same way? Who’s to say that some online service might be taken away because you belong to a demographic the business owners don’t agree with, or disagree with the political administration, or even just called them out in public?
Nothing. It could well happen, and these services all but guarantee it will eventually.
So, that’s why we’re cautious about Switch Online and its services, and why it’ll never fully replace buying physical copies of games. Because as examples like this show, online only games are a short-term, transient thing at best, and something that can easily go away as easily as it came about.
Regardless, what do you think? Are you disappointed to see a game removed from Nintendo Switch Online? What are your thoughts on physical vs digital games in general?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below, on social media, or on our Discord server today!
Source:
Japan: Super Soccer leaving Nintendo Switch Online in March (My Nintendo News)