Switch 2 Game-Key Cards Not Eligible For Preservation By Japan’s National Diet Library

Earlier this year, Nintendo started making Game-Key cards for the Nintendo Switch 2, attracting controversy due to being a “physical release” that does not actually give players ownership of the game, merely acting as an access key for a digital download.

Speaking to Famitsu, Japan’s National Diet Library seems to be in agreement with this assessment. The National Diet Library is Japan’s largest library of publications and content, and began archiving videogames for preservation back in 2000. Japan’s government even mandated domestic publishers to submit their games to the library for preservation.

When asked about whether Switch 2 Game-Key cards were eligible for preservation, the National Diet Library responded to Famitsu as follows (machine-translated):

Because the target is “physical media that contains the content in the software itself,” a key card alone would not be recognized as content, and the National Diet Library would determine that it is “not subject to collection or preservation”.

It should be noted that this appears to be more because Japanese law currently does not allow for digital games to be preserved by the library. Digital Books and Magazines were only recently made eligible for preservation after amendments to the law were made. Should the law be amended again to make Game-Key cards eligible, the National Diet Library would likely begin them in for preservation.

Even so, requiring the law to be changed at all is another major hurdle to game preservation that Game-Key cards present. Many third-party Switch 2 titles have been releasing only on Game-Key cards, which will make preserving them daunting in Japan if companies continue down this path without a corresponding change in the law. Nintendo also seems to be dodging criticisms about the format, at least for the time being.

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