Nintendo Online Cloud Saves Can Be Recovered Even If Subscription Ends | Gaming News

It’s been roughly a week now since Nintendo‘s Online service went live to the public. With the service, players are now required to have a subscription in order to play online multiplayer games and be able to upload their game saves to the system’s cloud storage. While there have been claims that cloud saves would be deleted permanently if a user’s subscription were to end, Nintendo has let players know this certainly will not be the case.

In a statement given to Tech, a spokesperson from Nintendo made the announcement that if a player’s subscription expires at any point and they have saved data in cloud storage, that player will be able to recover the data so long as they resubscribe for the online service within six months of the initial expiration. This statement corrects earlier presumptions of the service that there would be no way of recovering any lost data.

It appears as though there is no extra requirements to the re-subscription process in order to back up game saves again. While the best individual deal for Nintendo’s Online Service costs $19.99 per year, a month’s worth of online features will only cost $3.99. Meaning if someone isn’t willing to commit to the full year but wants to still have access to the service, they could essentially pay for just one month’s worth of online in order to reset the countdown of their cloud saves being permanently erased.

Switch owners who mainly play single-player games can breathe a sigh of relief knowing there’s a safety net in case they forget to renew their online subscriptions. Another time-based feature of the online service, the NES streaming library, requires players to login to their accounts every seven days so that they may continue playing games on the NES Online catalog, and that’s not the only strange stipulation coming with the NES Library either. The NES Switch-compatible controllers also require users to verify their online subscription in order to purchase them, meaning all others are ineligible to buy them.

For those who might not be willing to spend the extra money in order to pay for online, there’s a way to exchange Nintendo Gold Points earned from making purchases either on the eShop or Nintendo.com to pay for subscription time. So while there is a time limit to how long someone can go before losing their saves, there are multiple options available to get back into the online service to recover everything.

Source: Tech