Nintendo Is Already Punishing Switch 2 Users Over Piracy ‘Suspicions’

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the pre-crime dept

Back in May, we talked about a change that Nintendo made to its EULA that essentially amounted to “We’ll brick your console if we don’t like how you use it.” Now, Nintendo will tell you that the changes were done to protect the company from the threat of piracy. The problem is that’s not what the EULA actually says. Instead, it lists out a series of actions it is prohibiting, despite most of those actions having perfectly legal and legitimate use-cases that have nothing to do with piracy. Here’s what PC Gamer had to say about it at the time:

The sections I most take issue with are the prohibitions on copying, modifying, or decompiling software—particularly as it no longer accounts for it being “expressly permitted by applicable law”—as well as hardware/software modifications “that would cause the Nintendo Account Services to operate other than in accordance with its documentation and intended use.”

No game or hardware modding, no extracting ROMs⁠—something Nintendo continuously asserts we cannot do, even though it is a legally protected consumer right⁠—and no dual booting to another OS.

When it comes to extracting ROMs, that is perfectly legal in America. Threats to render a $500 console functionally destroyed because someone engaged in legal activity isn’t just absurd, it should itself be illegal. As is often the case, Nintendo is asserting rights it simply doesn’t have here, with overly broad restrictions on a console that the buyer, in theory at least, owns.

Well, we have yet to see Nintendo go that nuclear route of bricking devices, but it is already exacting punishments on owners of the Switch 2 for the use of a MIG Switch.

The device in question is called the MIG Switch and it’s a cartridge that users can load up with games—either ones backed up from legally purchased copies or files pirated online. Nintendo started suing people who sell the MIG Switch last year and designed the Switch 2 so the carts wouldn’t work with it. The makers of MIG Switch, however, recently released a firmware update that made it possible to use the devices to load Switch 1 games on the Switch 2.

Nintendo has responded by banning any Switch 2 that it’s seemingly found to have run one of the illicit flash cartridges at some point. “My NS2 has been console banned and I have absolutely no idea why!” wrote SquareSphere on the Switch 2 subreddit earlier today. “The only thing I can think what has happened is that I tried my Mig switch in my NS2 once.”

There are a lot more of these reports out in the wild, but essentially Nintendo is cutting these consoles off from all online services. And, again, the offense leading to this punishment is the use of a device that can be, but is not strictly, used for piracy. Other uses include backing up your game library, loading your ROMs from games you absolutely purchased so they can be ported over to your new Switch 2 on one cartridge. In fact, for their piracy concerns, Nintendo has a bunch of other methods for policing that sort of thing.

That being said, it isn’t as simple as dumping pirated copies on a MIG-Switch and calling it a day since Nintendo has robust anti-piracy measures in place, often through unique cartridge identifiers. If two users attempt to play the same game online simultaneously using a single copy, Nintendo can flag this as piracy. As you can expect, this likely has led to many false positives, especially in the case of used cartridges.

It appears the Switch 2 is even stricter on this front, as there are now widespread reports of users being banned even when using what they purport as their own legitimately dumped game ROMs on the MIG-Switch. While users’ Nintendo accounts reportedly remain unaffected, their consoles are now blocked from accessing Nintendo’s online services. That means saying goodbye to Mario Kart World, the eShop, YouTube, cloud saves, and the list goes on.

Now, why it’s allowed to do all of this without any confrontation from any sort of consumer rights organization or, hell, civil litigation lawyers is possibly just a matter of time. The console is new and perhaps we’ll see some of that activity in the near future. We certainly should, after all, given how wildly anti-consumer this all is.

Filed Under: mig switch, piracy, roms
Companies: nintendo