Rumor: Retailer Suggests That Nintendo Policy Limits Game-Key Cards From Being Reprinted As Full Cartridges

With the launch of the Switch 2, Nintendo introduced the Game-Key card, a controversial form of “physical” release that does not include the game on the card, just a license to download and access it from the eshop.

Now, some interesting news has surfaced about how Nintendo handles these game-key cards. In a now deleted post on social media, Canadian retailer Video Games Plus (VGP) claimed that there was a “Nintendo policy” preventing Game-Key cards from being reprinted as a full game cartridge down the line.

“As we’ve stated many times, we’d actively try to get existing Game-Key Cards titles reprinted as full-on-cart versions, but at the moment, there’s a Nintendo policy preventing that.”

After the post attracted a large amount of attention, they quickly followed up with another now deleted clarification, saying that there are “certain reasons” for this policy being in place, and that Nintendo is not “intentionally” stopping publishers from releasing game-key card games on full cartridges later on.

The policy is in place for certain reasons that make sense… Nintendo is not intentionally stopping publishers just for the sake of it, there are legit reasons for this policy to be in place at the moment.

It is speculated one of these “legit reasons” is to prevent consumer confusion or frustration. If a publisher chose to release a game-key card and then switched to a full release down the line, some customers might feel cheated out of a physical release, forced to buy the game twice, or accidentally buy the game-key instead of the proper physical release if they are both on sale at the same time. It is suggested that Nintendo may only allow a change in format if the new physical version is an entirely different build, such as being a “complete edition” with all DLC on cart for instance.

That said, Nintendo has not officially mentioned this policy anywhere, so we caution readers to take this with a grain of salt.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.