At $19.99 a year, the Switch Online subscription isn't exactly expensive. In return for your money you gain access to a growing list of classic NES games, full access to online multiplayer in games, and a secure backup of your save data thanks to cloud saves. However, those save backups are only secure as long as you continue to subscribe.

As IGN reports, initially Nintendo stated that in order for cloud saves to remain available an active Switch Online subscription was required. That suggested a lapsed account would see the save data instantly deleted. The situation has since been clarified, with Nintendo now stating that cloud saves will be kept for 180 days after a subscription ends.

By offering a six month period to re-subscribe, Nintendo is allowing some breathing room. However, if you do lapse and have no intention of re-subscribing, you can't access the cloud saves during the six month period. To do so, you need to re-subscribe, which is fair enough in my opinion.

If your main reason for subscribing is to take advantage of the cloud saves, be aware that some games will not be able to use them. Nintendo already confirmed that Splatoon 2, Pokemon Let's Go Eevee & Pikachu, Dark Souls Remastered, Dead Cells, FIFA 19, and NBA 2K19 won't save to the cloud.

The reason for this is because it would enable cheating in any game that allows items to be traded between players, or has online multiplayer ranking. Cloud saves would let players revert back to a previous state in those situations. There are better solutions to this problem, but Nintendo isn't adopting them for now.