Nintendo Switch Online to Delete Game for the First Time in History

Nintendo has now confirmed that Super Formation Soccer will be deleted from Nintendo Switch Online on March 28, the first time in history a game has been deleted from the subscription service. The move creates a surprising precedent, and there are fears additional games will be deleted from the platform in the future.

Nintendo Switch Online has been steadily including more titles to its growing library ever since it went live in 2018, adding titles from NES, SNES, and Game Boy consoles. The subscription’s Expansion Pack tier also includes classic games from Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, and Sega Genesis consoles. That steady growth is now being equalled by the first-ever game removal for the platform.

As reported by Nintendo Life, the announcement came through Nintendo’s Japanese customer support portal, and it assured that Super Formation Soccer — a 1992 Super Famicom release by Spike Chunsoft — would no longer be available to subscribers. Nintendo failed to provide further explanation for delisting the game, though its status as a third-party licensed sports title may be the cause.

Removing Super Formation Soccer from the Nintendo Switch Online library opens up questions about the long-term sustainability of the service’s library. Previously, the service has been putting in new games but never pulling a single game out of their library, unlike other services like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass, which have games entering and leaving their libraries on a regular basis.

Subscribers have been calling for Nintendo to add more systems to its Nintendo Switch Online subscription service, most notably GameCube titles, and have beseeched having the classic Pokémon RPGs added. But eliminating Super Formation Soccer could raise the question of whether or not third-party games could be affected by future expirations on their licenses.

Nintendo hasn’t commented on whether the removal would be universal across the world outside of Japan. As the service continues to expand, players will be crossing their fingers that game removals continue to be an exception rather than a harbinger of what will occur with the subscription service.