Why was there almost no outrage about game keys?

The Real Jdbye · May 18, 2026

Skelletonike said:
The game was made by Koei's Omega Force and The Pokemon Company probably didn't expect it to blow up like it did.. For this type of game however, I did buy it digitally since it's a nice game to have always available.

Co-developed by Game Freak.

Pseudo99 · May 18, 2026

There are about a dozen Switch 2 games that I don't own because they're on game key cards. I've said from the beginning I'm fine paying $10 over digital price for a fully offline phsyical copy of the game. It's never so much the price that bother's me, it's the arrangements I'm forced into due to corporate oversight. You can always see the shift when game companies are being run by accountants instead of gamers.

Skelletonike · May 18, 2026

The Real Jdbye said:
Co-developed by Game Freak.

Given how good the game is, they probably didn't do much.

TVL · May 18, 2026

Ondrashek06 said:
Everyone was complaining about game keys at first, but then Nintendo said that it's a third-party thing and that they'll always have proper physical releases, so the outrage died down.

And then they immediately went and released a game that's exclusively on game keys and has no proper physical releases, and NO ONE actually cared about that and everyone just gobbled it up.

Why did that happen? How come there was almost no outrage about that?

I don't know if complacency is the correct word. What I mean is people have no hope and just takes an ass raping, is that the correct definition of complacency?

If companies see money pouring in nothing changes. The only real protest is not buying. Angry words on a website doesn't change anything, at least I don't think it ever has.

Marc_LFD · May 18, 2026

People say Pokopia doesn't deserve a full cart release...

It's still published by Nintendo and only ten freaking gigabytes. They know what they're doing.

DiscostewSM · May 18, 2026

Marc_LFD said:
People say Pokopia doesn't deserve a full cart release...

It's still published by Nintendo and only ten freaking gigabytes. They know what they're doing.

If we are to note the publisher(s), TPC is the publisher for the game in Japan. One could argue that with Nintendo publishing everywhere else, they could simply make it fully physical for "their" version. But that could create conflict. What exactly? Dunno. It could be a Japan thing.

The Real Jdbye · May 19, 2026

Marc_LFD said:
People say Pokopia doesn't deserve a full cart release...

It's still published by Nintendo and only ten freaking gigabytes. They know what they're doing.

It's pretty sad. I would have probably already bought the game if not for that. But my Switch 2 is full, and looking at SD card prices just makes me mad, so I can't even buy the digital version without deleting something.
It looks like digital and "physical" are priced the same for this game, so you don't even save anything by buying digital. I'd rather pay 10 bucks more for a proper physical release, but they don't even give you the option.

MRJPGames · May 19, 2026

Avalyn said:
You don't care, that's fine. But lots of people care. I play on pc where I can get DRM free stuff, legally on gog or less legally other places. Regardless, it's drm free, and lots of people are making sure it will stay that way. DRM is anti consumer, in every way.

And yes, as we all know, the world only has 20 million people in it.

What they're saying is that your in the minority. Which is a fact. Personally I don't care. I understand thsoe that do. Doesn't change that those that care make up a tiny fraction of the total addressable market. 20m units in around a year is a large amount, so clearly the minority that cares is not big enough to inform decision making at any large company, like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

This is not me saying they are right not to care. But under capitalism there is no real incentive for them to care, it won't negatively affect their bottom line.

Avalyn · May 20, 2026

MRJPGames said:
What they're saying is that your in the minority. Which is a fact. Personally I don't care. I understand thsoe that do. Doesn't change that those that care make up a tiny fraction of the total addressable market. 20m units in around a year is a large amount, so clearly the minority that cares is not big enough to inform decision making at any large company, like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

This is not me saying they are right not to care. But under capitalism there is no real incentive for them to care, it won't negatively affect their bottom line.

I don't care about their bottom line. That was never the point. They still make good games - I just refuse to buy DRM-locked products with no resell value.

Along with ever increasing subscription prices, if the idiots want to gobble this up, please by all means, you can throw your money all you want into that bottomless pit.. I'll just put my money elsewhere

aoimatsuri · May 20, 2026

The Real Jdbye said:
I just don't buy them.

THIS.

Even digital is better.
Cause ~~piracy~~ cheaper

I'm glad Nintendo got no money from me from 2000 till 2026.

And where I could, 2020 till 2026 was all physical.

DiscostewSM said:
The only servers that have shut down for Nintendo have been payment servers. Games that are delisted are only removed from being purchased on those servers.The servers with the games themselves remain intact, including those from the DSi/Wii era, allowing folks to download their purchases. This is actually a benefit to game key cards after the payment servers shut down, because those do not require the payment servers.

We'll see about that.
Serverspace is finite as games get bigger

VmprHntrD · May 20, 2026

Marc_LFD said:
Dude, what? There obviously was, but people can't keep going on and on about the same thing forever. Just don't buy it.

Much as I want Pokopia, I'm not buying it because it's a Key Card. Thanks, Nintendo.

Post automatically merged: May 16, 2026

It's not about collectors, but people who want the full game on cart. I'm sure there's collectors out there that have bought every single Switch 1 Code in a Box releases and now they'll do the same with Switch 2 Code in a Box releases and Key Card releases.

They're not about preserving games or wanting a physical copy, they want a case even if there's nothing inside.

Or do what I did, don't give Nintendo a dime, but, find someone fed up with the game selling it at a price you consider fine for a digital release and grab it. I thought $70 was pure bullshit for a key card so I avoided it, but when I had a chance to get it for $45 second hand I grabbed it. Nintendo got nothing out of me so that's a win, and I still have the game and can experience it which is also a win. There isn't another one on the market, they don't get the credit(Nintendo) for it, and I didn't lose out.

You are right it's about wanting the totality of the game on the card. Pokopia if I read it right can be game shared entirely within some reasonable caveats to the old Switch, so it's neither big (it's sub 10GB sized) and not thirsty either. It was all about being greedy since they had access being 1st party to smaller cards before others did and a 16GB card would have more than done it.

Yet there are some games that are over the 64GB cap and others that have a memory bandwidth requirement that the game cards are too slow for and that's also a reasonable good pair of singular reasons to accept a key card because it's digital either way, but this is resellable digital which is a plus.

I've always refused to buy paper in a box(code slip) on the older switch, not a fan of digital either unless the price cuts low enough to and I know is also safe enough not to lose out buying garbage and being stuck with it.

Zkajavier · May 20, 2026

For the big majority of games you will never have the full thing in the cartridge anymore anyways.

There are tons of "day 0 patches", then additional updates, DLCs, etc.

The only advantage of physical nowadays is just the ability to share or sell the game to others. And that's something you can do with game key cards, so it's not big problem people thought it'd be.

Marc_LFD · May 20, 2026

Zkajavier said:
For the big majority of games you will never have the full thing in the cartridge anymore anyways.

There are tons of "day 0 patches", then additional updates, DLCs, etc.

The only advantage of physical nowadays is just the ability to share or sell the game to others. And that's something you can do with game key cards, so it's not big problem people thought it'd be.

Those are patches yes, but as long as it's playable it's still good to have the game on the cart.

So now... We'll have to rely on piracy to preserve Switch 2 games.

VmprHntrD · May 21, 2026

Yeah that's not true, a good many NS2 games even now are tipping towards being all on the card unless the memory bottlenecking off the media or lack of total space needed issue doesn't crop up. As it seems with the 16+32 options there now, more are coming out with a real copy that does work, and while they may possibly have patches or even ugh a zero day patch, Nintendo seems to be making people have stuff work out of the box which is good. And yet on NS1 most games are legit and work, not so many games on that are download paper in a box, so in large both systems seem to be far more fully working physical than not.

OldGnashburg · May 22, 2026

Game Key Cards are the reason I've only ever bought one Switch 2 game, the other reason being is that there are almost very few Switch 2 games I'm interested in and the ones I am are mostly 3rd party and Game Key Cards so I don't even bother. I might buy Hyrule Warriors at some point but another issue is the games are all so expensive now and I have an insanely massive back catalog. The reason there's not outrage is because people have given up

hakoshi · May 22, 2026

I feel like i'm a physical game collector now :rofl2:

, because i got about five of them and i don't have any game key card.

Fk you nintendo i'm not buying game key cards

Marc_LFD · May 22, 2026

hakoshi said:
I feel like i'm a physical game collector now , because i got about five of them and i don't have any game key card.

Fk you nintendo i'm not buying game key cards

Whoa, five Switch 2 physical releases? That's impressive.

Mine is just... 3.

Tigran · May 22, 2026

Avalyn said:
There is, many of us are not buying the switch 2 because of it.

I bet you have a huge steam library though.

Marc_LFD · May 22, 2026

Tigran said:
I bet you have a huge steam library though.

I have a huge collection of games on the Epic Store, but never spent any money. Annoyingly, after all these years they still don't allow user reviews which I like to read than what journalists say.

MrQQ · May 22, 2026

because nintendo fans are stupid

Why was there almost no outrage about game keys?

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