The Nintendo Switch celebrated its first anniversary on March 3rd, 2018, prompting many — including MobileSyrup — to look back on the console-handheld hybrid’s success in its freshman year.
However, a recently discovered Switch bug has soured the occasion for some players in a rather bizarre way.
Over the past few days, gamers around the world have reported that playtime data for games they first played around the Switch’s March 3rd, 2017 launch has mysteriously started disappearing from the system.
For example, some fans who said they put hundreds of hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — a Switch launch title — are now reporting that their Switches say they have never played the game at all.
As noticed by Polygon, it appears that after a full 365 days have passed, the Switch will remove playtime data found in the user profile section. Booting up a game again after the 365-day-period will leave a record saying “first played zero days ago.”
Thankfully, there have been no reports that indicate actual game save data has been affected, so the actual 400 hours of progress one put into Breath of the Wild won’t be truly lost.
According to Nintendo, the playtime data hasn’t been erased from the system completely; rather, the issue stems from some sort of glitch that prevents it from displaying properly.
“Some Nintendo Switch owners’ play activity info is displaying incorrectly, but play activity is still being recorded accurately in the background,” reads a statement on the official Nintendo of America Twitter page. “A future system update will resolve this issue and ensure play time data is correctly displayed. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
It’s currently unclear when the system update will roll out.
Via: Polygon
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