Masakazu Sugimori, a composer and former Capcom developer, has shared his take on Nintendo’s Game-Key Cards. The key cards have been a thorn in gamers’ side ever since the Switch 2 launched.
He frames them as a forward-looking way to protect the gaming industry from piracy and waste. The problem is that his defense misses the reasons why players are angry in the first place. Thanks to these Game-Key Cards, players don’t actually own the games they’re buying.
What Game-Key Cards?
Game-Key Cards aren’t game cartridges. The cards don’t contain any game data. Instead, it gives you a license so you can download the game from the publisher’s servers. Once the servers go offline, the game you paid money for becomes unplayable.
From a business standpoint, publishers love it. Less physical inventory and fewer manufacturing costs. For players, it’s yet another reminder that you don’t really own what you buy.
Sugimori’s Defense of Nintendo
Sugimori argues that switching to key cards isn’t a sign of corporate greed. “Do physical items outside of digital products last forever? Most of the time, they don’t, right?” Sugimori said. “Physical things always have a lifespan and will eventually break. Digital products, on the other hand, generally don’t have a lifespan.”
He frames the Game-Key Card model as a way to prevent piracy. His argument is that since the data isn’t in the key cards, it can’t be extracted. He insists that Nintendo is trying to protect the gaming industry, though even he admits that idea is too optimistic. If Nintendo leads, he suggests, other companies will follow.
The Problem With That Logic
Sugimori’s comments are tone-deaf and miss the whole point of why everyone hates Game-Key Cards. Yes, a disc can break. If it’s cared for properly, physical media can be archived for decades. Game-Key Cards, by contrast, are worthless the moment a publisher pulls support.
The lack of preservation is a huge issue. Institutions like Japan’s National Diet Library only accept media that actually contains game data for archiving. Since Game-Key Cards don’t, they’re disqualified. That means entire libraries of future Switch 2 titles could vanish the second their servers shut down. We’ve already seen this happen when Nintendo closed the Wii U and 3DS digital stores. Imagine the same fate for Switch 2 games.
Maybe it’s because of what’s going on with Randy Pitchford and Borderlands 4, but Sugimori should have stayed out of it. It’s clear he doesn’t understand why gamers are upset about the Game-Key Cards. His comments are only making the situation worse. He’s showing that the gaming industry doesn’t care about preservation. People are getting tired of being reminded of how they don’t own the things they pay money for. Sugimori just gave them another reason to keep their wallets closed.
