Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’s Direct just came to a close, revealing a bunch of new features. Many of these features revolve around giving the player much more freedom than they had in the previous game, including the ability to sculpt the shape of their island and create new items.
If you are reading this, then I assume you are world-aware enough to predict exactly what will happen when the game launches: there will be willies everywhere. People’s islands will look like willies, the items and pets that players draw will be like willies; it will be a total sausage fest. And it turns out, Nintendo knows this, because it’s putting barriers in place to stop us sharing our creations with the rest of the world.
Nintendo Is Making It Harder To Share Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream Screenshots
“Nintendo aims to create experiences where players have the freedom to enjoy their Mii characters in their own way,” reads a post on the Nintendo website. “In Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, this freedom can sometimes lead to humorous, surprising, or unpredictable moments during gameplay.
“While these moments are often fun for players, we recognise that out-of-context scenes may be misunderstood or may not reflect the spirit in which the game is intended to be enjoyed,” the post continues. “We have decided to place restrictions on certain image sharing features. These limits help to make the worlds players create in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream remain fun and safe, and that the game can be enjoyed comfortably by all players.”
The wording heavily suggests that this is in aid of maintaining a family-friendly image for the game, but it is hard to imagine more of an overreaction than this. Given the nature of Tomodachi Life, many of us will be screenshotting the various shenanigans our Miis get up to, and will be wanting to share those moments on social media, just as we did with the first game.
However, judging from the wording on the Japanese site (spotted by ResetEra user –R), you won’t be able to share images from the Switch directly to social media platforms, or even share screenshots to your phone. Instead, you’d presumably have to take the SD card out and insert it into another device, moving the pictures that way. Many of us probably aren’t used to doing that anymore, so it definitely seems that the process has been made more difficult to disincentivise sharing screenshots in the first place.
Not that Nintendo will need the help, but it’s rid itself of some free advertising in doing this. I’d argue it’s a fair trade to risk a few inappropriate screenshots getting shared online if it means more people buy the game. After all, we saw the same with Splatoon, and it didn’t seem to really hurt the brand.
- Released
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2026
- Developer(s)
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Nintendo
- Publisher(s)
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Nintendo
- Prequel(s)
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Tomodachi Life
- Franchise
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Tomodachi
