When the Kingdom Hearts games were announced for the Nintendo Switch, the cheering quickly subsided when people realized they would be available as Cloud versions. The cloud version of a video game, in essence, provides a means to stream content without the standard CPU processing power required if it was run in the system itself. We already see this in Microsoft’s xCloud as well as Google Stadia, but because of the Switch’s modest technological power, the ability to offer games that were meant for Xbox or PlayStation is striking. Streaming bypasses the hardware requirements that an otherwise elaborate game would’ve made it impossible to play on less powerful machines.

Many people have vocalized numerous complains surrounding Cloud gaming. One that floats to the top of the list is the fact that access could be stopped or shut down at any time–so even though you paid money, you don’t really “own”…