The Nintendo Switch shouldn't wipe playtime data after a year, fix coming in next firmware update
Nintendo Switch owners were shocked to find over the weekend that their playtime data of launch games has been erased.
Over the weekend, several users on the ResetEra forums and Reddit noticed that their Nintendo Switch consoles no longer display playtime of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
After some digging, they found out that games that are a year old (the Switch recently celebrated its first birthday), such as Breath of the Wild, have had their playtime data erased, leading many to assume the Switch only keeps record of playtime for a year.
Upon further investigation, some suggested that this happens because the Switch doesn't take the year into account when checking a game's last played date, only the month and day, which means if you were to check your launch day Zelda: Breath of the Wild playtime now, it would read zero.
Sometime after that, Nintendo fan magazine Nintendo Force said that the playtime only disappears for ten days, before it comes back on day 11. You can this in the screenshot below.
Nintendo said in a tweet that it's aware of the reports, and will include a fix for this issue in a future firmware update.