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[–] 56 points 1 year ago

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.

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  • [–] 47 points 1 year ago

    Imagine paying $450 for nintendo to play judge and jury over your property

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  • [–] 132 points 1 year ago (15 children)
  • [–] 58 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    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

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    This is significantly worse than anything I've experienced from Microsoft. I've never heard stories of consoles just getting bricked. I'm sure they exist, but it didn't make the news from frequency. Consoles shouldn't be bricked.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Just to clarify, the console wasn't bricked, only banned from online use. Which also means banned from accessing eshop or downloading any updates. But physical games that doesn't require online would work fine.

    Not that this is fine, shouldn't be banned for this either, but just clarifying the bricking part.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I wonder if a banned console could download a game from a game key card, because if it can't, then there's not much of a difference between a ban and a brick.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    For future games yeah, but there's a huge Switch 1 library that a banned system can play but bricked system can't.

    Also funnily enough, I believe they can safely play the "backed-up" games offline, that originally got the Switch banned. 😀

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    But physical games that doesn’t require online would work fine.

    Do we know this for sure? On the original Switch, when new games came out, they often would refuse to play until you updated the firmware on the console. So depending on whether they allow banned consoles to update their firmware, offline games might not work either.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Ah, I see. I've been hearing stories of them getting bricked as well. Unrelated, but controller drift problems were reported on day 2. I would like to recommend abstaining from the purchase of any Nintendo products for the forseeable future. Seems like they hate their customers and aren't really willing to change, no matter what. Zelda and Mario are pretty cool, but I think that at this point, Nintendo is just running on nostalgia and brand recognition.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Do you have any sources for those bricked consoles you've heard of?
    I've heard of a recent update to their ToS, where people have mentioned the possibility of Nintendo bricking consoles, but haven't actually seen any examples.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Excellent question. Apparently, after having looked into everything, they haven't been bricking, just banning. As someone else said, it basically does the same thing for most people, as you can't get updates or access the store. Another person said that the keycards don't work either. Honestly, I don't really care if half of the unproven stuff is untrue. The $80 games were the first thing to piss me off.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Heaven forfend we want the little pieces of plastic and silicon to have a life after we get bored of them.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    There is no issue with selling them. The issue is with cloning the games, selling them, and then keep playing them, which is basically pirating the content.

    Nintendo still shouldn't ban the buyers, but this isn't about not allowing resale after you have played or gotten bored of the game.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (18 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Would they really? I mean, the way I see it, they are pushing for the all digital market more and more. It's really in their best interest to kill a market that gives no money to them.

    Besides, they don't need to outright kill it, just spread the fear of bans if you buy used. Enough to indirectly kill the market by making people believe buying used is dangerous.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    You have a good point. As long as that fear is in the used games market, people will be incentivised to only buy new cartridges (if not digital) as they can't trust any used ones. The only sales then would be between people who know each other and are swapping their games, which is a far smaller market. It is somewhat ironic that the MIG Switch, a device made by people who have nothing to do with Nintendo, might end up helping Nintendo revenues by making it so that nobody can trust that used games weren't cloned.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I have a foolproof way to never get banned on switch 2.

    1. Don't buy a switch 2.
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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    You just contradicted yourself. Steam accepts it. They just don't want to actively enable it, so they have the kind of DRM that prevents using copied game files.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It is extremely unlikely that Steam are accepting of piracy. They may be negligent (maybe not investing enough into copy protection), but being even somewhat accepting would immediately tarnish their reputation with game publishers. Denuvo seems like more of a quick fix, not a real solution, that was put on after publishers started to lose patience. Even for their own self interest, they would be losing money on their own published games.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    gaben has out right explained why trying to stop it is stupid, and he was objectively correct too.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Wasn't Gaben's point in that statement that although piracy inevitably happens to some degree, the best way to mostly prevent it is to make a good service? That's why Steam was such a success, as it made digitally licensed games easily accessible to PC gamers who were previously being screwed over by other platforms.

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  • [+] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (4 children)

    Its legal as long as you don't sell the original game. And as long as you don't do that there isn't a problem either. The issue stems from copying a game, selling the original and still use the copy. If no 2 copies of the same cartridge are online at the same time then there is no issue.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    It's legal. Even if you sell on the product after the fact. There's no accounting for whether or not you kept your backup. They don't know what happened to the file. Perhaps you sold the entire console, games and all. Perhaps you lost the physical cartridge and someone else found it and sold it. The point is, Nintendo shouldn't be allowed to brick a physical device just because they feel like someone might have violated the law. They aren't judge and jury.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I mean that really depends on the country, but I was talking how that usually is in my experience. In Germany you have to own the original medium of a backup and according to a quick google search same for the US.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I already covered the fact that it depends on the country in my first comment.

    I'm arguing that the person who bought the used game has no control whatsoever over the fact that a backup copy of that game cartridge had been created.

    If you so much as lend out your copy of a game they can brick the system that the copy was leant to? That's what you're arguing here. Because that's the conclusion of "you have to retain ownership". The conclusion is that that somehow makes it okay to harm a third party you can't even prove did anything wrong.

    Say I lend my copy of a game to my kid? I'm still the owner. I still have the cartridge. This is what I'm talking about. Nintendo doesn't know that the law was broken just because you inserted a mig cartridge into your console. They don't know that the law was broken when the game cartridge is inserted into another switch.

    But they are acting as if they do know and are actively detrimentally affecting their customers as a result and they don't care. That's not okay.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    If you give away the card to your kid just leave your switch in airplane mode and you won't have a problem. But even so it's not allowed to do that. Btw you can also do that with a digital copy to lend it to another switch while in airplane mode.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [+] 25 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I swear Nintendo is the reason for the stereotypes about Japanese businessmen. Delusionally prideful, psychotically controlling, aggressively narcissistic, and entirely ass backwards.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    🏴‍☠️

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I'd just turn it off and keep it offline so that you're on the lowest possible firmware for potential future exploits

    Then 🏴‍☠️

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    From what I've been seeing in the Switch Hacking groups, you might be waiting a very long time. Nintendo has the kernel locked down very tight. I'm hoping that a vulnerability becomes exploitable but those that know more than I are less hopeful

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 year ago

    Yea, it might be a wait. I picked up a launch unit just for the purpose of future exploits. I'm just leaving it sealed on a shelf, worst case, I can probably get back what I paid for it in a few years since sealed Nintendo stuff holds their value decently enough.

    Like most other people seem to feel about, there's just not enough of a pull for me to want to play it LMAO

    Especially since I already haven't played my fully modded Switch 1 in a few months as is xD

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Reason number 245 of why not to buy a Nintendo switch.

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  • 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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Unless the game is delisted, which happens very rarely, or they shutdown Switch 1 eshop, which shouldn't happen for quite a while, I don't think there's any reason why you won't be able to download them again.

    Of course if you are using modded Switch, that's another issue.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Eventually it will be shut down. And if they just released the Switch 2, it means it's coming soon.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Not necessarily. Switch 2 seems to be using the same eshop at the backend, just like PS5 and PS4 use the same system, so don't think Switch eshop will be shutting down soon.

    But yeah, eventually they will shut it down.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    If you don't know anyone, could you point me to a store that has them in stock?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Constantly sold out here in Japan. Even the discounted Japan-only version that was meant to stop foreign purchase and resale with more restrictions such as Japanese-language-only

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Same would happen with the Switch 1 if you play pirated games through sigpatch though

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They shouldn't be "going after" any game sales. All they are going to do is punish legitimate customers while the ones ACTUALLY stealing/pirating are going to sail free.

    You really think a grandma that gets some games from a garage sale for their grandson or granddaughter is going to be happy when a game happens to be a pirated copy and bricks their device?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    But they aren’t going after used games sales. They are going after piracy. This used card just so happened to be the exact one ripped and uploaded to a piracy site, so on Nintendo’s end it looks like they are using a Mig flash device to play a game backup. So it’s not an attack on anybody for buying used games but a very unlikely and unfortunate incident that was solved with a phone call. If grandma happens to pick up a copy of a previously ripped game at a garage sale (amusing to imagine the guy who ripped it holding one of those in the year 2025 but possible) then a polite phone call explaining that situation would have also likely worked because I’m sure Nintendo wants to avoid the shit show of actually permanently banning innocent people.

    Again, I’d prefer that Nintendo just relax on all of this but I’m not going to get all mad about it. Even the user who it happened to is less angry than some of you and said customer service was very fast and friendly about helping him. It will never ever happen to anyone in this thread or anybody that we know and even if it did it will be sorted out. I’ll save my outrage for things that are actually outrageous.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I don't want to play a numbers game with factors I have no control over, nor visibility into.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [+] 1 point 1 year ago (8 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    That's interesting because I rarely use my steam deck because of my switch 1 and 2. Seems like this is almost... Hmmm... Personal preference. Something like that

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    You know you're comparing steam deck (2022) to an 8 year old console that's about 2 times smaller and has better battery life, right? Also Cyberpunk 2077 is way better on switch 2.

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Don't know what their message was that they deleted, but I play tons of third party games on Switch. It's my go-to for any indies, or long RPGs. Even for general gaming, as long as the performance and visuals aren't a major downgrade from other consoles, I prefer to play that on Switch.

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