They Won’t Immediately Vanish
Nintendo has always been a little behind the curve when it comes to online gaming. Not only are they the last of the big three to start a dedicated online service, but it hasn’t felt as feature complete as fans were hoping for. At the very least, it seems like the cloud saves system is on the modern side.
If your subscription expires, you’ll have up to six months to recover your cloud saves before they vanish into thin air. Now, the only way to get those saves back is by activating your subscription again, but you can still get them back. The lack of local backups is frustrating, but this is a small step in the right direction. Unless you decide you’re done with Nintendo’s online service for good, in which case they are definitely gone forever.
A previous report stated that “Save data stored with Save Data Cloud cannot be kept outside of the duration of your Nintendo Switch Online membership.” This sounds like a lot less than six months. People were understandably upset. Thankfully, it seems like things aren’t quite so bad, so long as you come back in less than six months. Now Nintendo just needs to do away with that goofy mobile app for voice chat and they’ll have something resembling a full-grown online service.