You may have noticed that your Switch playtime data has recently been erased. You’re not the only one — it appeared that the Switch was resetting how much time had been spent playing games since on or before March 2, 2017. However, according to Nintendo, this is not actually the case.
Players initially thought this may mean that the console only tracks the month and day on which a player starts a game, but doesn’t include the year.
For example, Polygon received a pre-release copy of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on February 24, 2017, and began playing the game that same day. They eventually poured hundreds of hours into it. However, sometime after the Switch’s first anniversary (March 3, 2018) the hours logged on BotW had disappeared and were replaced with, “First played 6 days ago.”
Nintendo, however, is claiming that early adopters of the console are not seeing playtime data from a year ago because it is “displaying incorrectly” for some users.
No word on whether this is an issue that will be fixed, but it’s good to know that, supposedly, this is merely an error and that the hundreds of hours those of us have devoted to BotW, Super Mario Odyssey, and other beloved games on Switch, may show up again soon.
Source: Polygon