Switch users are discovering that the console has reset their logged playtime a year after purchase. Although the Switch didn’t come out in Australia until March 3, 2017, players who received Switches prior to then have been noticing an unwelcome surprise next to their Legend of Zelda “Profile” entries.
The Switch tracks users’ playtime in the “Profile” section. It’s not always accurate — if you’ve only played a little bit of a game, the Switch just handwaves with “played for a little while”. But usually, players can see that they have played, for example, 40 hours of ARMS or, if you’re Kotaku editor Kirk Hamilton, 145 hours of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
This morning, a ResetEra thread pointed out that early-adapting Switch users’ playtime data has reset. Dozens of Switch users piped up to complain that they no longer have hundreds of hours on Splatoon 2.
Kotaku staffers who had the Switch and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild prior to the Switch’s official launch confirmed it on their own systems, with Kirk’s 145 hours diminished to a sad “First played 10 days ago” (he got the Switch around a year and ten days ago).
Users presume that the Switch simply doesn’t track playtime after a year, but Nintendo has not returned a request for clarification.
The sky isn’t falling; it’s just a very strange way to celebrate the Switch’s first birthday.
Comments
17 responses to “The Switch Apparently Stops Counting Your Play Time After A Year”
Maybe Nintendo didn’t think anyone would play for more than a year!
What? Did you guys say that the Nintendo Switch apparently stops counting your playtime after a year? You guys need to contact Nintendo for comment because I want Nintendo to fix and update their Nintendo Switch firmware so they can keep counting our playtime not reset our playtime. Happy one year anniversary Nintendo Switch but for god’s sake Nintendo please fix that Nintendo Switch firmware and get it updated ASAP because I think stopping our playtime after a year is absolutely unwelcoming.
Bravo Nintendo (again)
I always find your hate boners for Nintendo very amusing.
Oh. Sorry. Is it still illegal to say anything negative about ninty?
Bravo Sony for bringing in PSN name changes!!!! Oh wait……..
Not at all, just funny to find the same people posting negative comments on stories they probably should never even click on because they’re obviously uninterested and have written off the subject matter. I know nintendo ain’t perfect sheesh. Just don’t see those kinds of comments on ps4 threads is all, and hey Sony aren’t the most forward thinking themselves when it comes to their policies. Great games but.
Why does it matter what others say about a console? Lighten up.
It’s like Nintendo’s own, very Nintendo, version of the Y2K bug.
*shrug*
I woulda thrown in stuff like:
“Buy a new game already”
“Why am I tracking your bad habits?”
“How about you ask how long I’ve played for, inconsiderate sod”
kind of annoying but also, who cares? I think i have looked at that play time screen once in the entire year
Except that’s impossible because the game has only been out for about seven and a half months.
Hundreds, plural so At least 2 hundred.
24 hours in a day sleeping the average 8 leaves you 16 hours.
7 and a half months, so approx 230 days.
230 days x 16 hours a day = 530 hours.
It is entirely possible to get hundreds of hours.
I know that, I’ve got thousands myself. That’s not what I’m saying though, the game was only released in July last year, not March. It hasn’t been around for long enough to be affected by this bug.
From my understanding it happens a year after the console purchase not the game, so people’s switches are ticking past a year old now and will reset their hundreds of hours.
It happens a year after the day a game was first played. The playtime counter reads “first played X days ago” for the first ten days, then it switches over to “played for more than X hours”. The tickover of a year since that first play date is triggering the reset, not the age of the console. All the hours for the on my non-launch games on my launch console are still intact, while Zelda and Super Bomberman read as first played 1 and 3 days ago respectively. 1-2-Switch and the Snipperclips demo have disappeared from the list entirely for some reason, even though they were first played on launch day like Bomberman was.