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PC STAYS WINNING

PC Gamer US Edition

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September 2025

NINTENDO can brick your Switch; I've never been happier to be a PC gamer

- Ted Litchfield

PC STAYS WINNING

Nintendo has changed its online user agreement in multiple consumer-unfriendly ways just before the launch of the Switch 2. Chief among them: Nintendo asserts the right to render your console "permanently unusable" if it determines you're in violation of the agreement.

No game or hardware modding, no extracting ROMs—something Nintendo asserts we cannot do, even though it is a legally protected consumer right in some countries —and no dual booting to another OS.

I’m getting a clear message: you spent $450 on this hardware, but Nintendo does not think you own it.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to jailbreak or modify a console, or extract a ROM from a game you own: many original Switch games run better via PC emulation than on the original console, and Nintendo is only just catching up to that capability with the Switch 2's potentially compromised backwards-compatibility.

PC Gamer US Edition

This story is from the September 2025 edition of PC Gamer US Edition.

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