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I am fairly new to Switch and especially to Pokemon games.

I’m planning to format my Nintendo Switch and I want to make sure I don’t lose my progress in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. I know that Nintendo does not support cloud save feature on Pokemon games (most of them).

But,

  • Is there a way to back up the save file so I can restore it later?
  • If not, are there any safe alternatives to preserve my save data before formatting?
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As far as I know, there's no way to backup Pokemon savefiles, probably because they fear exploit and duplication on rare Pokemon or whatever.

The only way to move your savefiles is to transfer user and savedata on another Nintendo Switch. Which is not the same thing, sadly.

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  • Since this is a single player game, why would they worry about "exploiting" ? Commented yesterday
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    @pc_fuel you can still trade Pokemon with other people, and savescumming you can duplicate rare/event/shiny ones. I'm trying to give an explanation why Nintendo doesn't let us back up Commented yesterday
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    @pc_fuel there's a (black) market behind rare Pokemon and people spend real money buying them, at least they are trying to make things harder. Commented yesterday
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    @pinckerman which is still idiotic because the ones selling them 99% aren't playing a legally bought game on a bought unmodded console... so... the only ones suffering are the legit players. Let's be honest, the reason they don't let you back up your saves easily is to sell things like Pokemon Home. Commented yesterday
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    @pc_fuel Also, Nintendo run real-world tournaments every year with cash prizes ($2,000,000 total, split across 8 categories, in 2025) which this could easily affect. Most people treat it as a single-player game, but some people are successfully using the multiplayer aspect as a professional career. Commented yesterday

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