More than six months after the Switch's launch, Nintendo still shows no public interest in giving players the ability to externally back up save files on the popular Switch console. "I can’t say there’s a solution coming, but we do hear the message," Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku in June, the last time the issue was addressed publicly (Nintendo has yet to respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica).

With no signs of help on the horizon from Nintendo itself, many Switch owners are publicly looking to console hackers to add a feature that Nintendo, ironically, seems to have blocked to help prevent such hacking from happening in the first place.

"I LOVE my Nintendo Switch but knowing that one drop might cause me to lose all of my save data is terrifying," Reddit user Ma_name_is_Jeff writes in a heavily upvoted thread in /r/NintendoSwitch this week. Another thread , from user 313ctro, recounts how 200+ hours of Breath of the Wild progress was lost to a broken system, echoing the experiences GamesRadar's Anthony Agnello reported months ago

In the comments to those popular posts, many Reddit users are expressing hope that console hackers will be the ones to add back this important feature, which has been present in some form or another in every console since the original PlayStation. "As soon as a hack is publicly available with save backup features, I'm going to do it," shadowdude777 writes. "They've left me with no choice at this point. Nintendo, as always, is one of the most tone-deaf companies in the gaming industry."

"I have purchased many Switch games yet I'm here considering hacking the console because as a paying customer I can't copy some files," user _esistgut_ adds. "Until I hack the Switch I will buy multiplatform games on PS4."

"The sad part is that I'm sure there will be a homebrew save manager for those with a hacked Switch," user needhelptmo chimed in. "How frustrating is it to know that those with hacked systems will get this feature, but the people that pay for games and keep Nintendo in business are continuing to be treated like potential thieves."

Can’t stop the signal

That "potential thieves" bit refers to the most likely reason Nintendo doesn't allow external backups of Switch saves: fear that the feature could aid console hackers.

There's some validity to this concern. First the Wii and then the 3DS had widespread hacks that made use of modified, corrupted save data to get into portions of the system memory that are usually disallowed. By not allowing save data to move off of the Switch in any way, Nintendo likely hopes to thwart that potential hardware attack vector this time around.

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime nodded toward this motivation in an E3 interview with Mashable earlier this year. Save-file backups, Fils-Aime said, are about "everything from not only how is it going to work but it’s also how we do this in a way that doesn’t lend itself to piracy or systems or our core software infrastructure that can be modded or hacked. Those are all of the things that we need to think about from a business standpoint." (emphasis added)

Here's the thing: the lack of portable save files doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of thwarting Switch hackers. Last month, hackers made waves by uncovering and then unlocking a hidden copy of NES Golf embedded on every Switch system. And just last week, a team going by the name ReSwitched went public with its early work , sharing open source Github projects that allow for homebrew development, arbitrary code execution, and analysis of the Switch hardware.

These exploits currently require some serious command-line and router-based tinkering and only work on outdated Switch firmware version 3.0.0 or earlier (i.e. they won't currently work if you want a Switch that can run Super Mario Odyssey later this month). But the hacking effort has obviously made plenty of progress even without direct access to the Switch's save files. In fact, hackers have been talking about their own ability to back up Switch save files, among other things, at least since July (though the methods remained secret to the public at the time).

Online chatter suggests Nintendo blocking that save-backup feature could be causing a spike in console-hacking interest from Switch owners simply looking to protect their game progress. Sure, a few Reddit threads aren't a scientific random sample of Switch owners, and plenty of people will be interested in console hacking for other reasons (some likely less than legal). But there do seem to be at least a few people out there interested in jailbreaking their Switch just to get this one crucial bit of protection for their game progress.

"Nintendo's biggest reason for not allowing SD card backups is to avoid hacking," as PhazonUK put it on Reddit. "But it's likely the number one reason at the moment to hack the Switch is to be able to backup your saves."