Nintendo reserves the right to brick your console following "unauthorised use", in bid to prevent piracy
Nintendo reserves the right to brick your console following "unauthorised use", in bid to prevent piracy
Nintendo has updated its Nintendo Account Agreement with a severe warning against "unauthorised use", in a bid to prevent emulation and piracy.
Ah. So now we're merely 'licensing' physical hardware we paid for and have in our homes. right?
You always have with Nintendo products. They have always had very aggressive licensing practices. In the early days they were more flexing them on developers, but it does not surprise me that in the wake of everyone telling them that modding and emulators can be explicitly legal that they would turn that particularly litigious aspect of their family friendly brand on the customers.
Afaik not in Europe. But the details are probably messy.
Always has been unless you count modding to remove this kind of shitty DRM.
Nintendo was the company to popularize DRM in home consoles with the US release of the NES. The Famicom had no DRM even though it was identical hardware otherwise (well, that, the RF modulator, and the PCB layout).
I don't seem how threatening to brick a device is intended to help you sell more of them. Like I was seriously considering buying a Switch 2 even recently, but this is really the nail in the coffin. Why should I pay money for something that could stop working on their whims? Because it's not like these measures have been 100% accurate in the past.
Because it's not like these measures have been 100% accurate in the past.
This is the part that really frustrates me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the wording here. Account ban? Sure, against TOS, etc. But affecting the device is a whole other story. Especially when prior account bans have come under dubious circumstances.
youre not the exploitable target audience.
like legit 100% evil intent, cant even argue against that
Yeah, definitely gonna stop those pirates who soft/hardmod their systems and never connect to the Internet/run updates in order to dump their games or play pirated copies or whatever they wanna do! That'll stop them!
/s
Edit:
This seems to be more about their online account services and their updated privacy policy than anything else, but I still think my point stands, just not for this article.
The problem is when a new game is released that requires an update to a later firmware version.
I think I’ve had it before where the updates applied to the system from the game card.
Unless I misunderstood what was happening. We will have to wait for someone to figure that out.
I’m rooting for someone to home brew the switch 2 ASAP
You'll probably have a while to wait.
The Switch 1 was able to run homebrew due to a hardware exploit in the CPU which allowed injection of arbitrary code. The interesting thing about that vulnerability being that since it was a hardware vulnerability, it couldn't be patched out even after it was discovered.
Following that incident, I'm sure Nintendo has been working especially hard to ensure there are no similar vulnerabilities existing on the Switch 2.
That said, console hackers are an amazingly creative and talented bunch, so I wouldn't be surprised by anything.
Firmware is dumped almost immediately as well, not a big deal to update a switch offline.
At this point I'm surprised Nintendo still allows people to play their games at their own homes, and not exclusively in official Nintendo-branded Play Rooms that only exist in like 6 places outside Tokyo and costs $20/hr to rent.
Don't give them any ideas
So a few years ago I wanted to play a Japanese version of a rhythm game that isn't available to purchase in the USA and decided to try my hand at modding my switch for this one game.
After(poorly) doing it, I wasn't able to play that game AND Nintendo bricked me. All my games on my switch that I purchased were unable to download or play anymore.
So I went and set out to mod my switch correctly.
Now if I actually wanted to give Nintendo money, they won't allow me to. So my only option from then on is to pirate.
They basically turned a potentially paying customer to a non paying customer.
So, this is a basic security principle. If the system of access is too "secure" or too inconvenient, people will create workarounds.
Need keys for all the doors every second of every day? You'll find duct tape on all the latches.
Password is 15 characters and changes every 60 days? You're going to find post-its under keyboards.
Spread all digital content across 8 streaming providers that cost about $180/y? Torrent time.
Nintendo wants to brick users for trying to play an out of region game they paid for? They'll never pay again and will reverse engineering your shit out of spite.
Same thing we saw with the music industry utterly failing to embrace internet distribution. Limewire and bearshare are their fucking lunch.
When will they learn to just make access easy? People, generally, would rather pay than pirate but when you start making shit difficult, nobody wants to play your games anymore and you see massive losses.
Meet your customers where they're at!
Basically what Gabe said.
Soooo, just curious but, instead of modding, why didn't you just set your console region to Japan? That's what I did. Just seems a lot easier.
I didn't know you could do that. I'm in Taiwan and I know Steam doesn't let you make a purchase without a local credit card. So I imagine that's the case for Japan.
Well that's some fucking bullshit.
At this point I want Switch 2 to flop so hard they go the way of the Sega and start licensing their IPs on other platforms, giving up on consoles. A shame, too, since their tech is little kid hand friendly and the PC market doesn't seem keen on tiny screen handhelds.
It's a nice thought, at least.
i kind of want the steam deck to eat the switch and i really don't have a dog in the fight
A steam deck lite would probably dominate, lol
With the price of software it will be interesting to see how it goes. I think they jumped the gun a bit hard on that one and will have to backpedal.
They can "reserve the right" all they want, that's illegal where I live, and they sell their devices officially here. I'd love to see them trying to hold this stance in court - even Apple lost here over a similar issue, so go right ahead and try.
or alternatively communicated: “You will own nothing and you will be happy”
Oh, you thought you owned that thing you bought? No. This is 2025. You own nothing. It doesn’t matter how much money you gave them. Yeah, gave them. Because you didn’t buy that stuff. You’re just borrowing it.
Can’t wait for Yuzu 2 to come out.
Apparently Torzo exists already!
Also knowing how butthurt Nintendo is rn it probably means Switch 2 is vulnerable to emulation so not that long probably.
That's it, I'm going to skip Switch 2 and get a Steam Deck next. And I'll stick to stuff that can run Dolphin.
(Learns that Xbox Series can also run Dolphin without modding) Well shit, I'm set for life, now just need to sort out the portable console situation
If corporate enshittification is the reason for you to skip on the switch, giving any more money to Microsoft doesn't make sense either.
Sony tried that in Brazil, but it didn't go as planned. The court ordered them to unbrick it, but they had to provide a new console because they couldn't unbrick it. And they paid damages.
I'm gonna pirate some Nintendo games just out of spite, really.
I've been pretty consistently buying Nintendo consoles, but I'm not buying this one. Not just because of this, but I challenge these assholes to brick the device I end up playing their games on.
Cool! Time to go to the sea for more nintendo stuff! Good think you cant brick a device you dont have control over 😘
I'd like to say their legalese is written in a way that covers more ground in the US, the most litigious country in the world. I would imagine if this was taken to court, their lawyers would argue that "permanently unusable in whole or in part" includes a console serial ban from NSO, or argue that it's the user's fault for bricking the console when they attempted to mod it, and Nintendo is therefore not liable or obligated to fix it.
But between the UK-ToS and US-ToS, Nintendo just straight up tells Americans that they themselves are going to break your damn console if you do a thing they don't like. That is absolutely dystopian.
I’ve recently decided to complete all the games we’ve bought on our family Switch before allowing myself to get a Steam Deck alongside my Ps5.
While Nintendo has some very good games, I think I’ll never buy again from them.
Just fyi, I believe Sony has stated the same right as well.
The reason this is in legalese is because of the possibility of online cheating.
I don't agree with it, I'm just saying the
excusereasoning console corporations give.Anyway, it's illegal to do that in the EU anyway.
Everything is about "online cheating" it's the think of the children!! of the gaming world
It’s not fair, but I give a pass to Sony as their games are more my type and I’ve always used Sony consoles a lot.
Sony ain’t probably better than Nintendo as a conpany, that’s also why I’m extendibg my reach with Steam Deck gaming in the future.
i can't wait to pirate their new switch 2 games 🥰 its gonna be awesome.
That's cool. I'll install Torzu on my ROG ally and play all the fucking switch games I want to.
i mean if i had a specific nintendo console for pirated games, i wouldn't connect it to the internet
Wait, it doesn't appear to be the same within the EU.
Both the French and German EULA seems to say that if you alter a digital product, the digital product might be rendered unusable. Although my French and German is bad, so someone please double check.
I don’t see how this is different from any other company. Xbox has forever done the same. I’m pretty sure Sony has too
I don't see why I should be okay with that either.
Fuck tinendo.
Nintendo emailed me today saying something like they changed their EULA and if I didn’t do anything then it counts as accepting the new EULA unless I close my account. Haven’t had a switch in years, didn’t even like it and gave it away. Anyway I closed my Nintendo account immediately.
That corporation is still stuck in 1985 or 1989 (otherwise stuck in the Showa Era), trying to keep absolute control of anything it made.
I know it should have been earlier, but that really is the last straw for buying Nintendo products for me.
what a shame.
They're going to start breaking them as soon as the switch 3 is released I guarantee it.
Also this seems like I don't know not theft Maybe, but some crime.
Damn, first they get shady patents and now this. They're really on a roll for being a pretty unethical company.
They're the Disney of gaming, really.
So true. And what’s sad is that so many people love these two companies😨