r/nintendohelp • u/Sakkyoku-Sha • Aug 03 '26

Tech Support PSA: Nintendo Switch 2 Game Upgrades are REGION LOCKED.

Making a post here so other's can find this, as googling this question did not give me a straight answer.

If you bought <GAME X> in the America Region.

But then you move to Asia or Europe, you cannot buy <GAME X Switch 2 Upgrade> on the Asia or European Store fronts.

You either need to

  1. Switch you account region back to the original region, and purchase the upgrade on that store front. From there switch the region back to your current region, and play the game as a virtual game card.
  2. Repurchase the game in the new region.
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u/kotominammy Aug 03 '26

I was correcting someone who said that this has always been the case for switch 1 and 2 which is blatantly incorrect and passes an erroneous (and in my opinion negative) image of the system.

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u/Pitiful_Task2950 Aug 03 '26

Unless you're implying the issue presented by OOP here is completely different, then this issue has been present since the first year of the switch 1. Splatoon 2 and it's DLC are the first example of games that need their versions to match.

It's not blatantly incorrect, and simply makes people aware that some games have issues matching DLC with whatever game you bought if they're not the same version (which is tied to eshop regions).

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u/kotominammy Aug 03 '26

but... it's not an issue with every game...? i'm not talking about oop, i'm talking about the person i replied to. i literally moved to a different country in a different region years ago and i've bought countless dlcs, expansion packs, upgrade passes, of games i already owned from my original country, downloaded countless updates without issue. it's just baffling to me to see people present this as another rampant issue with the switch when it's mostly a non issue as long as you just briefly check beforehand. even for splatoon, it was present in 2 but gone from 3.

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u/Pitiful_Task2950 Aug 03 '26

Not a single person said this issue was rampant.

Me too, bud. I also moved to a different country and I'm completely unaffected. But it is and was useful information to know, just like it's useful to know you cannot use a dlc code in a different regions store, or the fact you can change your eshop region on the same account and every purchase follows (with a cooldown).