I would say corporations are a risk that the democratic system needs to address more readily.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Nintendo services (mostly), but governments need to regulate these sorts of companies better.

There is no way regulation should allow Nintendo to change the rules of how users can access all your content. Not on Switch 1 hardware, at least. Speaking for myself, I spent 8 years buying digital content understanding the rules; and then they changed them, so now I can’t play any of my games I share with my family members online ever again. Not without investing a lot more money to get duplicates.

And that’s just one example.

Perhaps just as big, but one I don’t complain about because it didn’t bite me in the ass, was Nintendo shutting down access to VC and WiiWare downloads. That shouldn’t be legal. Those games should still be available for download, even if the storefront itself is gone.

And the Minecraft example is part of an enormous problem with digital gaming right now, the inability to move assets around from account to account, whether it is content or currency. If I have an account, there should be a feature to allow to transfer money to another account. Granted, by adding that in it will increase the operational expenses of the services, which will increase prices, but it might be negligible depending on the volume of transactions (and it might require a third party service specialized in this to prevent money laundering) - and the benefits IMO outweigh the cons for most consumers. But I guess that’s a whole different discussion - other people are much more concerned about price levels than I am.

If you own a digital asset, there should be a service to allow transfer.

Interacting with support for any company is hell these days. I learned that Verizon support chat will refuse to transfer you to a real person unless you start swearing at it. Then, people on the line will tell you to wait while they look into things because if you don't type for 10 minutes the chat will auto-disconnect and they won't have to deal with you...

I do that all the time with online banking as well as billions of others. There are no operational expenses, it just needs to be implemented. Currency should be able to move between accounts. Digital content as well, but they don't want you to do that. First sale doctrine circumvented.

This will only get more of an issue as time moves on:

"When a Steam account holder dies, their Steam account, including all games and in-game purchases, is not transferable. Valve, the company that owns Steam, explicitly states that accounts and their contents cannot be inherited, passed down via a will, or merged with another account. This means the games and any other digital assets associated with the deceased account become effectively lost"




Apparently there already is a mechanism for transferring coins at least:

Bot WC said: I see. Just to set expectation, digital code is not transferable but what we can do here is to transfer the content directly to the Minecraft game through Gifting process.

You said: The content being the coins?

Bot WC said: That's correct. However, since it's through the game process then you need to contact Minecraft support for it.

But they claim only Minecraft (which is Microsoft as well of course) can do it.



It's moving somewhat, got a reply this morning:

Thank you for providing that information. To ensure your ticket is handled properly I will be escalating this to a specialist. This may result in a slight delay in a response from our team. Please refrain from submitting additional tickets since this may increase your wait time. If you do have additional information or questions you would like to provide, please let us know by replying to this email.

Thank you for your patience, we look forward to assisting with your request.

Got to call in the specialist for this 'unique' problem. /sarcasm

similar issue with Fortnite.........

My nephew has a PSN account with his email, and son A has a fortnite account on PS. Son B uses the email from the PSn account to have an Epic account.... My nephew buys with his visa stuff for his kids on Fortnite; Last week Son A got fortnite gift cards (150€) for his birthday but he can't use it because you need an Epic account with email....Son A never was registered so Son A can not use the points. So far I know it is still not fixed.

Yeah that's another thing that really sucks, irreversibly having to link emails and accounts with other accounts.

The only (non) solution atm is to make a new psn account with new email (and lose all your progress)

I'm juggling 10 different email accounts between me and my kids. (And they still have their school email accounts as well)
(And just counted my password library, over 200 passwords for all the different accounts and services ugh)

All because linked services need unique (email) accounts or you run into those kind of problems your nephew has.

Yeah but explain to a kid that he will lose all his skins (especially the ones who were only temporary available)  

I know :(

We had that situation when he moved from Minecraft PS4 to PC. Why can't I play in our worlds, where are my skin/texture packs.

Fortnite same thing but he didn't have much on the PS version yet. The email account behind that 'died' and thus also the Epic account attached to that email.
It just says "Cannot find Google account" when I try to access that email.

He plays Fortnite on Switch and PC now, irreversibly linked. He got bored of Fortnite for now, hopefully it all still works when he gets back to it... He does have some season passes and unique skins on that version.

It just so annoying platform holders and 3rd party games require linking that cannot be changed.


This is what managing my kid's and my own gaming accounts feels like, only with about a 100 more connections!

It took a few days, but if you ask nicely they'll help you out.
My kid just checked, it's in the right spot now. (He wanted marketplace mods for easier red stone building with more options)

Hello Sven,
 
We appreciate you for reaching out to Minecraft support. My name is Luke. I will be glad to assist you today. Thank you for the information describing your issue in such great detail.
 
We will grant a one-time exception and add the purchase of 1720 Minecoins to the correct account. Please note we do not normally do this and will be unable to do so again in the future. Please be very careful when purchasing content or currency and ensure you are logged into the correct account.
 
Kind Regards,

Remember, it's morally ok to pirate Microsoft games.