A March video explaining the new Virtual Game Card system that launched via system update today.
While that old system could be cumbersome to set up, it actually allowed for quite a bit of flexibility when it came to game sharing. As Nintendo noted on its official FAQ as recently as last week, two users could play a single digital game purchase at the same time, as long as the Nintendo Account that purchased the game was playing on the secondary console (with an active Internet connection).
But Nintendo’s FAQ explanation for “how to play the same digital game at the same time with different Nintendo accounts” has been removed from the current version of Nintendo’s Switch digital game sharing FAQ. In its place is a link to a new page detailing the Virtual Game Card system. While the new FAQ also discusses the Online License feature for sharing games “even if you don’t have a virtual game card loaded,” there is no longer any discussion of how to access a single digital game on two consoles simultaneously.
Ars’ own testing confirms that trying to load a digital game while another Switch is actively playing the same game results in a “play is being suspended” error on one console. This seems to be true even if one console has a loaded Virtual Game Card for the game being played and even if the consoles use different Nintendo Accounts from the same family group.
Players can simultaneously play different games from the same digital library on two different Switch systems, but only if at least one of those games is on a loaded Virtual Game Card.
A partial workaround
Players who want to play a single digital game purchased across multiple Switch consoles simultaneously can still use a partial workaround. A Switch console with a Virtual Game Card currently loaded should be set to Airplane mode (or have Wi-Fi disabled), and the user’s Online License feature should be enabled for the game’s original purchaser. The first system will still be able to play that Virtual Game Card offline, while the Online License feature will allow the same game to be played at the same time on a second system.