Nintendo bans Switch 2 owner after they played used Switch 1 games — decision eventually reversed after proving ‘innocence’
Nintendo bans Switch 2 owner after they played used Switch 1 games — decision eventually reversed after 'proving innocence’
While I still have a nostaligic soft spot for Nintendo IPs like Mario and Metroid, I'll never give Nintendo a cent again for being a bunch of greedy asshats. Emulators are love, emulators are life, fuck Nintendo.
Imagine buying a hardware, and the manufacturer holds it hostage and can brick it anytime, or it can ban you from all online activities, unless you use it as intended.
It just happens that intended use also maximises profit for them.
Fuck Nintendo sideways.
It’s just not nearly as nefarious as it sounds. This person basically won the anti-lottery of buying a used game that was ripped and distributed on a piracy site and flagged by Nintendo. The chances of that happening when you buy a used game are unlikely as fuck… but because it can happen to individuals, they asked for a little proof that this user was telling the truth and then unbanned him when he provided it.
This isn’t something that’s going to happen to many people realistically but it’s nice that there’s a solution if it does.
It's guilty until proven innocent on a device the person owns enforced by the company that made it.
Fuck that.
No company should have the power to brick a device because it isn't being used the way they want.
So I also don’t like any of this and wish Nintendo would loosen the fuck up in general as they take in record profits… but I stand firm on the fact that this isn’t as nefarious as some are making it out to be, like they are specifically going after used games sales. It also won’t affect pretty much any of us ever and therefore isn’t worth getting my feathers ruffled over any. If it happens it can be sorted out relatively quickly.
I don't want to play a numbers game with factors I have no control over, nor visibility into.
Lots of things in life are a numbers game you have no control over, often with consequences much worse than being temporarily inconvenienced having a ten minute interaction with customer service. Better never get into a car or airplane again, eh?
If you’re worried, save your store receipts or screenshots of listings for used Switch games and then this can be sorted in the very, very unlikely situation that this will happen to you. But it won’t.
There are proof of concept demos of running custom code on it, but that's always true on any console, especially those with browsers. There's no current method for truly running software using all hardware resources, nor bypassing the signature checks to pirate games.
It will certainly happen though.
Reason number 245 of why not to buy a Nintendo switch.
Fuck Nintendo
Yeah, literally nobody in my circle of gamer friends and acquaintances has any interest whatsoever in buying the new Switch. Not a single one. Not even the ones that were previously diehard Nintendo and Zelda fans.
Zero.
Crap like this is really underscoring why. Nintendo has ramped up their already user-hostile behavior far beyond the point of absurdity.
The happy-fluffy-starry-eyed wording in this article taking great pains to point out how "easy" it was for this person to have their fraudulent ban reversed are doing way too much heavy lifting. It never should have happened in the first place, and there shouldn't even be any mechanism that makes it a remote possibility.
And then there's this:
Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether they can still play with the used game cartridges they purchased, or if these are considered pirated copies that could result in another console ban if used.
Uh-huh. Miss me with every single molecule of that shit.
I had a friend that went to the store at midnight to get the Nintendo he pre ordered.... Some people just don't care unfortunately
Holy crap that was a fast reply lol. The part where they were like “at least it’s not as bad as m$ and Sony” like bruh THEY SHOULDNT BE DOING THIS AT ALL
Heaven forfend we want the little pieces of plastic and silicon to have a life after we get bored of them.
I do wonder what a more permanent solution for these sorts of situations could be, as right now these things are case by case. Either Nintendo tolerates the use of cloned cartridge IDs (which is something no game company/publisher/whatever have you would ever accept), or they bring down the ban hammer on random people who just bought a used game and had no idea it was used for copying (which is just a dick move). Nobody buying a used game is going to have any real idea where it came from, and in a lot of used stores the carts probably get mixed around anyway. Having any sort of checker for cloned IDs would also be difficult, as Nintendo's systems probably only catch it when both are in use at the same time. Perhaps they could use some system to look for MIG Switch use specifically, and only block that cartridge? That would probably be the best way to go about it, but I'm not so sure about the technical details that would make such a thing work, as it would require some reverse engineering of the MIG Switch.
EDIT: I do think as well this article is too generous to Nintendo. The writer focuses on how easy it was to get unbanned, rather than the ban in the first place. Nintendo should at least start sending an email warning or something before deciding to block online. That would give people a change to figure out what is going on, instead of waking up one day to find they can't access the eShop or GameChat.
There's a darker solution, which is what nintendo would love more: kill the second hand market.
And these moves might very well do it. If news spread and people start getting scared of buying a used game, second hand sales will drop and eventually die. Something that can only benefit nintendo.
Don't give them any more ideas! No, but actually, this might be an unfortunate consequence of this whole thing. Locking it to a console would get rid of MIG Switch, but at the cost of killing a big used game industry. I think they wouldn't try it, due to the sheer amount of blowback they would get (far beyond anything else they've done before), but we never know.
Either Nintendo tolerates the use of cloned cartridge IDs (which is something no game company/publisher/whatever have you would ever accept
Define "accept". Do you mean "like" or "not go out of their way to harass their customers"? Or something else?
As in they would never allow that to happen under any circumstances. Companies are already clamping down on other platforms due to piracy (just look at how many Steam games have Denuvo in addition to the Steam DRM, Steam's protections get cracked fairly easily nowadays), so not surprising Nintendo want to nip any copying problems in the bud before shit hits the fan.
Damn. The people who work at Nintendo truly are assholes. I'll never buy a single product associated with these morally and creatively bankrupted people.
I got one as a gift, but I'm not sure why they're selling so well. I haven't bought a single new game for it yet. There's nothing I wanna play until maybe Metroid.
Well, launch year sales are generally by enthusiasts. I got one cause I love my Switch, and my wish for Switch 2 was faster and better Switch, which is exactly what they gave us. So, bought it as soon as I could.
As for games, looking forward to Donkey Kong Bananza, not to mention I have a many Switch 1 games that I have yet to play, so don't have any shortage of games.
Yeah, I'm appreciating how quickly the Switch games are loading. Smash, Zelda, and Splatoon used to frustrate me a bit with their load times.
They can arbitrarily disable your switch 2 faster and better than ever before!
I'd just turn it off and keep it offline so that you're on the lowest possible firmware for potential future exploits
Then 🏴☠️
New DK game this week looks sick though
Given how the game sales have been going, I'd say a good chunk of its sales are to scalpers.
Same would happen with the Switch 1 if you play pirated games through sigpatch though
And with the 3DS, if you didn't strip the headers from games you ripped and played them on a different console
Imagine if this happened to a child, or someone who's got no knowledge about the topic. Your 600$ birthday gift will just rest in piss, because you bought a game someone had cloned previously, and there's 0 way to know about it, until you're already banned
Yeah, nobody buying used games will know that it was previously used for cloning. Hopefully they ease off on the bans until they can figure out a better idea on how to deal with MIG Switch.
There shouldn't need to be a better way. There are lots of places where using a MIG cart is legal to download games you have already purchased from the physical cartridge.
It's bullshit that they have somehow normalized the idea that they have the right to do this to paying customers in the first place.
Nintendo is going to die a slow painful death bcz of shit like this. I dont know a single person who wants a switch 2.
I'm far from a fanboy, but it's literally the fastest selling console of all time.
🏴☠️
I just had an interesting exchange with a nintendrone about this topic. Apparently, nintendo did the right thing because the guy who bought the game shouldn't go buying from shady people and, even if it was a store, then, the store is at fault (and not Nintendo), because the store should test the games they buy to guarantee that they won't cause a ban.
But in no way was Nintendo at fault for treating their customers as guilty until proven innocent.
I've been enjoying PC games a lot even though I have a Switch 1. I might even repurchase Balatro on Steam.
Like Terraria is hell on Switch, so I've already eaten that cost so why not for the other 3rd-party games I have?
I've stated repurchasing my Switch games on Steam (when rebates apply)
My switch games were all digital copies except for Zelda and Sea of Stars. I don't know if they'll even be available in the future should I accidentally delete them.
Eventually I might mod my Switch when it's not supported anymore by Nintendo and it doesn't connect to their network anymore.
Imagine paying $450 for nintendo to play judge and jury over your property