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.
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.
I assume they already gave them money for it years ago.
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.
Pretty sure that’s illegal in most parts of Europe. Checking the article it says that the policy has only been updated in the UK and the US.
Sucks to be a country without adequate consumer protection, I guess.
I’m pretty sure it’ll turn out to be illegal in the UK too, it’s just that the UK isn’t in Europe anymore so these things always end up having to get hashed out in the courts and then it always turns out that the UK basically just follows the EU standard anyway.
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).
That’s cool. I’ll install Torzu on my ROG ally and play all the fucking switch games I want to.
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.
The most secure device ever made is a Rock.
You cannot have your bank account stolen from a Rock. People will never get your personal files or medical info from a Rock. People will never spy on you through the Rock.
But you also can’t do much with a Rock.
I disagree on the premise that a rock cannot be used for much. I mean, the available actions for a rock ARE pretty limited, but it can be used in a variety of ways!
Good in a revolution.
Uh, we kinda tricked rocks into thinking using lightening and learned to use rocks to make AI…
Doesn’t Xbox let you change your console’s region in the settings?
Never tried. I’m a ps guy now, but the point is that there shouldn’t be region codes to begin with.
Anywhere I’ve ever seen a region code to be changeable you only get to change it a certain number of times before you get stuck in a region. This is why you’ll find TBD players that have been firmware flashed to be regionless.
i have an account on my ps4 (and ps5) that i log into and suddenly i’m in a different region. the ps5 says i only get so many region changes, but i can log into the accounts as many times as i want
Similar here. Bricked my kids switch, so we modded it. Now we have ALL the games.
How’d you mod it after you bricked it?
It won’t access the Nintendo network, can’t use store, etc. not 100% bricked. Sorry
Ah okay, thanks. I’m too scared to mess with most hardware so not always up to date on the terminology. My tinkering is exclusively desktop/laptop stuff.
It’s 100% worth the mod OR put that money toward a steam deck/Linux handheld. Im actually looking to sell this switch to put towards another steam deck. Sooo many more options and better support, not locked into Nintendo bullshit. Put whatever you want on it (like 95% of games right now, I’ve had very few issues) but did have to learn a bit. Beats the hell out of a locked down ecosystem 100000%.
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.
Next time just use a Switch emulator. Sudachi is a good one.
You can even download Fitgirl Repacks of Switch titles that include the emulator already set up and ready to go. Literally just a one click install and you’re playing.
This was before emulators were a thing. It was super early days of modding.
Fitgirl Repacks my beloved
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.
Cool! Time to go to the sea for more nintendo stuff! Good think you cant brick a device you dont have control over 😘
Well I also reserve the right to not buy their underpowered shit.
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
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
The target audience still goes online. Generally Facebook and mumsnet. Wait til it happens to one of them and the stories go round like wildfire.
With that market, especially at big luxury prices like a console, you exist solely on good faith.
you dont see the whole “children of rich western parents really dont care” audience?
They won’t give the first shit about piracy policies or anything like that, but they’ll care that MummyD123s DH bought their DD an electric brick that won’t keep them quiet any more.
why would it brick
Do you not realize what thread you’re commenting in?
what nintendo child will do that is my question, the third time.
idk if im missing something or you all repeat the same bit in hopes of something…
As part of a severe response to unauthorised use
same comment of mine here: what nintendo child will do that is my question
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.
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.
Hard to say. Consoles have certainly gotten more sercure and people finding vulnerabilities are far less likely to just give them out for free these days
But there is incentive to hack any console and nintendo has historically attracted the biggest dorks. Additionally they also seem to historically make pretty huge blunders, though the switch exploit was nvidias fault tbf
I’m pretty sure all Nintendo consoles have had a problem with being hacked. As far back as the Wii, people were able to run hombrew pretty quickly.
I think Nintendo just sucks at console security or maybe they are a bigger target due to their exclusives.
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You could have said that about every Nintendo console since the NES, yet here we are.
Firmware is dumped almost immediately as well, not a big deal to update a switch offline.
