this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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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.
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.
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.