Nintendo’s new Virtual Game Card system is live now with the latest Switch update. For those looking to hide their game cards away from prying eyes, they’ll have the option to do just that.
As evidenced by a user on X/Twitter, Virtual Game Cards can be hidden from your acquired list on Nintendo’s VGC portal. This makes it so anyone looking at your list of Virtual Game Cards won’t see any games you have on there, for whatever reasons you might have.
I tested this out myself, and was able to hide games like the Suikoden I&II HD Remaster and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. While the games would still appear in my list on my OLED Switch if I had them installed or loaded, they would be removed from the list once uninstalled.
At this point, you can go into your games list through “Redownload Software” and view the lineup, but you would need to head to the “Can’t Find Software?” section and log into your Nintendo account to see the list of hidden games. The same goes for the site too, which will tuck your hidden games away behind the “Can’t Find Software?” option in a separate folder.
So, if you have any particular games that you wouldn’t like noticed by other people using your system, you could tuck them away into your folder. It’s certainly a cumbersome method, as you’d need to unhide and reload games to make them playable again. It also still marked my account as playing Suikoden I&II HD Remaster when I booted it up, and marked it in Play Activity too.
But I suppose if you’re sharing consoles and want to keep, say, Mortal Kombat or Doom inaccessible, this might have some use as a parental control feature. Or maybe if you just have some salacious titles in your Switch catalog that you’d rather not see pop up when you bring your Switch to the next rooftop party, there’s some use there too.
Either way, your Virtual Game Cards can be hidden away now. The latest update also redesigned icons, added the system transfer feature for the upcoming Switch 2, and mostly shut off a well-liked loophole for game sharing. You can read up more on the new Nintendo Switch firmware update here.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.
