[UPDATED: Sept. 30, 2020 – 10:00am EST]
Surprise! On the eve of the game’s removal, Nintendo has decided not to pull the plug on the free Nintendo Switch title, Jump Rope Challenge. Back when the game was released in June it came with the same advanced notice that we recently saw with Super Mario 3D All-Stars; that it would be delisted after only a few months of availability.
The North American page for the game on Nintendo.com hasn’t been updated yet but the European page has, confirming that the Jump Rope Challenge will remain available “until further notice”. As a free download though, you might as well grab it even if you don’t plan on hopping around your living room any time soon.
I’ve been racking my brain since it was released to guess why Nintendo would announce a deadline for a free downloadable game that has no licensed content. I’ve still got several theories but the one I’m most fond of goes like this:
Small team of Nintendo developers, working remotely, designs a game of goodwill to help the newly housebound families of the world stay active as the COVID-19 pandemic sets in (and also while Ring Fit Adventure continues to be sold out globally).
“Shouldn’t we just make it free for a few weeks? This whole thing is liable to blow over soon, right?” one of the team ponders.
“Make it available for… three months, just in case,” answers the pessimistic staffer. “We don’t want people to think we expect this pandemic to go on forever!”
[Jump ahead to September 29th]
“So… this pandemic seems to be going on forever. Should we really take our free game of goodwill away from the world now?” the first staffer follows up.
And that’s my theory. I can totally see Nintendo not wanting to set grim expectations for a global pandemic when they originally released Jump Rope Challenge, so they set the deadline only a few hopeful months ahead. Now that it’s clear that millions are still housebound, and with colder weather barring outdoor activity for half of the planet, they’ve decided to just keep it free… for now.
This unexpectedly makes Jump Rope Challenge an epidemic barometer; the Punxsutawney Phil of pandemics. When it finally does get delisted will the world truly be back to normal? Only Nintendo can tell us now.
Our original post follows:
Back in June, which currently feels like a different decade, Nintendo threw a bone (carrot?) to the newly-housebound masses with the release of the free Switch title, Jump Rope Challenge. At the time Nintendo said that the game would be a limited-time release but I don’t remember seeing the deadline date of September 30th until Llamaman2 submitted it to the site.
Announced or not, this is your final notice to log into Nintendo.com and click the ‘Free Download’ button on Jump Rope Challenge. That’s a trivial amount of physical exertion to beat another odd self-imposed delisting from Nintendo. I’ve added the date to the Watch List calendar and will have a page up on the site soon.