A bunch of Nintendo Switch games just got the same patch, but no one’s quite sure why
ARMS has received its first update in five years, but we'd prefer if it got a sequel
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Nintendo patch
🆕 A bunch of Nintendo Switch games just received a mysterious patch
🕵️ Nintendo was coy about what changes the update brought
🔐 It looks like it was rolled out to address a common security issue
💪 But it marks a milestone for Animal Crossing and ARMS
What do Animal Crossing: New Horizons, ARMS, Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Maker 2 all have in common? Well, aside from being some of the best Nintendo Switch games around, they’ve all just received a mysterious new update that has players a little stumped.
Nintendo quietly rolled out the update for all of the games on November 15, but has given little indication as to what the simultaneous patch is supposed to do. The patch notes for each game read: “We have adjusted the game so that you can play it comfortably” (translated by Google).
How, exactly, they’ve been made more comfortable is anyone’s guess, although Nintendo dataminer OatmealDome suggested on Twitter the update was released to solve a security issue common to all titles. It’s a reasonable explanation, and would explain why all the games were updated at once with such little fanfare.
The update is significant in another way, though. It’s the first patch Animal Crossing: New Horizons has received since February following Nintendo’s decision to release the game’s last major content update the previous November. From here on out, don’t expect any new changes to come to the game other than the odd bug fix.
It’s an even bigger milestone for ARMS, Nintendo’s motion-controlled melee brawler that’s beloved by the few people who still remember it. It didn’t make as big a splash as Nintendo perhaps expected when it launched back in 2017 and received its last update five years ago. The fact Nintendo has even bothered to look at it again suggests this new patch did, indeed, make some security changes that couldn’t be overlooked.
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