Can you gameshare with the Nintendo Switch?

So you’ve bought a Nintendo Switch, and some sweet games to play with it. Awesome stuff, but what happens if your friend wants to borrow one of your games? Nintendo has a long history of cartridge-based consoles, and the Nintendo Switch carries that legacy forward. Lending out a cartridge is easy, but what if the game they want to borrow is one you downloaded, as a digital key from the Nintendo eShop?

Is there a way to lend a digital game to your friend, short of lending them your whole Nintendo Switch console?

So, can you share your games with the Nintendo Switch?

Short answer: Yes

Officially, you’re out of luck if you want to share a digital Switch game with a friend. There’s no system in place like Xbox’s Gameshare, but thanks to a quirk of how Nintendo set accounts up, you can still share games with another console.

It’s very similar to Gameshare on Xbox in that you have to deregister your Switch as your primary console, then give your login details to your friend. Hope you trust them, cause everything in your Nintendo account will be accessible to them. Open the eShop on your console, tap on your user icon, then scroll all the way down until you see Deregister and tap on that. Then give your friend your login details to enter on their console. That’ll let them download any games linked to your account.

There is one real caveat to this method. If one person is playing a game and the other person opens the same game, the non-primary console will get kicked off. Other than that, happy gaming! Also, please note, do not, under any circumstances delete your profile off of your Nintendo Switch, as that will take save files with it.

While you’re here, go enter our giveaway and you might win your own Nintendo Switch console.

What do you think? Plan on doing this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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