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Pete Hahnloser @beehaw.org

Nintendo warns that it can brick Switch consoles if it detects hacking, piracy

arstechnica.com

Nintendo warns that it can brick Switch consoles if it detects hacking, piracy

One might wonder about the ratio of Nintendo's legal budget to actual piracy losses.

Having been a college student back in the days of Napster (and ignoring the complete dearth at the time in physical stores of the sorts of music I was getting into), $20 CDs with one good track were not a value proposition. So when I downloaded a track, there was zero actual financial hit to whatever label or the RIAA ... it's a sale that never would have happened. You didn't lose money; you gained exposure.

My last console was an SNES, so I have no horse in this race. But being actively hostile to your customers generally ends poorly.

As a grown-ass adult, I've spent more than $2,000 on music on Beatport, mostly $1.29 at a time replacing the stuff I pirated for better-quality versions.

When you have to take away rights that used to be guaranteed by the first-sale doctrine, it's likely a sign there's something wrong with your business model moreso than users causing so much chaos (and profit loss) that you have no choice.

This isn't some fly-by-night AI toaster company that'll shut down services in a year and leave you fucked. It's Nintendo. They're going to survive just fine.

37 comments

  • Oh my god if I see one more "YOuR SwItCh 2 WiLl Be BrIckEd, NiNtEnDo iS aNtI cOnSuMeR!1!1!" post

    Every fucking modern console with an internet connection does this. Switch 1 does this. If you hack your console, keep it off the internet. Brain dead easy. Furthermore, are we talking account brick/ban, or full hardware brick, because obviously they're going to brick your account for online play, because hackers. If it's a hardware brick (without being on the internet), then that would suck (but is not surprising, obviously duh Nintendo doesn't want to lose money).

    People will figure out how to hack Switch 2, give it a few years. Emulators of varying quality will be made, and will be of good quality eventually.

    If you don't want Switch 2 for the price, don't buy it. Simple as that.

    • If that first line is your takeaway, you clearly didn't actually read my post, in which I said my last console was an SNES.

      So to presume my knowledge of modern consoles and belittle me because you're wrong ... breathtaking. I've no interest in a Switch. I posted this not because it has any chance of affecting me but because it seemed like news people who might want a switch could use. That's the purpose of a news-aggregation site.

      • My comment is not personally directed at you, it's just more about how everyone and their mom is talking about Nintendo's recent decisions on piracy. Literally every tech/gaming community on Lemmy (and social media in general) is talking about it, and I'm tired of seeing it every day. I don't mean to belittle you about your last console being the SNES, it's just frustrating rhetoric that others have repeated because they truly seem to think Switch 2 is the only console doing this.

        I understand what you mean about how someone who pirates probably would've never bought the game anyway, just like people (including me) who watch playthroughs of games that they never would've bought, hence tbe company was never gonna make money anyway. But even if companies know that fact, they're not gonna just ignore people who break their ToS to pirate because they don't want to lose money.

        As you stated, you buy music of the stuff you originally pirated, and some game pirates might do that. But music has replay value compared to a lot of games. Once I finish a long RPG, there's a very unlikely chance I'm picking it back up again, unless it's many years later or it's a hand-me-down to someone. If I pirated and played that type of game, I'm unlikely to buy it because why bother, other than to show support to the devs?

        Companies don't want to lose those who pirated and potentially would've bought the game. The whole point of piracy is that it has to be more convenient than buying the game, and since they know homebrewing can get to a very comfortable point, they don't want to lose people to that.

    • It's shit journalism and they don't care

      And yes I agree. It's been 5 days let it fucking go

    • We should make noise about it and enforce regulations that ban practises that do not allow people to own the things they own. We don't want to end up like america.

      • If you hack your console and put it on the internet, don't be surprised that you're bricked. Do I think it's a little extreme to brick a Switch that hasn't even joined an online game? Yes, that does suck, but realistically any game company is not going to knowingly let you use a device that is hacked. Once again, if it's just an account brick, then who cares, make a new one (why would you hack with your main account?). Hardware bricks are pretty shitty, but there's no way you could fight that in court (I deserve the right to hack my console and get free games?).

        Once they stop making updates, you'll own the switch anyway, as then they don't give a fuck/can't do shit about hackers. I've hacked my WiiU and several 3DS because there are no more new updates to ever brick them, they're obsolete/abandoned consoles.

  • My first Nintendo console was an NES that I got for Christmas the year it was released in the US. You can say thay I have been a Nintendo fan for a bit. Nowadays I repeat the same thing over and over again.

    Nintendo? Not even pirated. I avoid it all.

  • I fucking love the thought of paying Big Corporate in 'exposure' 😂

    Also my basic experience — nobody lost anything (Linux ISOs, obviously), because the alternative was not me buying something.

    Edit: As an adult, I've spent more money on vinyl records in the last decade than I have buying music for the first three quarters of my life. And much of the music in the first three quarters was also on vinyl.

    And then Spotify subscription fees since launch. What is that, 20 years? 😳 And now I'm trying to move to self-hosted because all of Spotify's buying stock in weapon manufacturers and giving head to Dumbph & Friends is making me retch 🤢

    • I never quite got the idea of music streaming. Maybe I'm just too old (yells at cloud), but I listened to radio shows (online) to discover new music, then downloaded it. In the era of mobile data, this seems to have been a solid choice.

      I struggle to hit my 5GB data limit by a large margin ... adding a streaming service and then having to upgrade my plan because of it sounds like throwing money away when I spend less a month on new tracks than Spotify costs.

      There's been some weird conditioning going on over the years with younger generations that it totally makes sense to just throw a lot of money every month at things that have cheaper, easily accessible one-time solutions. Just because you can't buy a house doesn't mean you should rent everything else.

      Hell ... I was born in the '70s, and the last time I had cable was when I lived with my parents. "Let me get this straight ... you want me to pay usurious prices because there's no way to avoid ESPN being bundled in and then trump it with ads?"

      As a rule, if it has ads, I won't pay for it (I was fine with it back in print days, as they were paying my salary on the other side of the hairline). That's what the advertisers should be doing. You're charging the customers too much and the advertisers too little if this is the equilibrium that makes line go up while taking money that customers could have had to spend on the advertised products.

      Let's say cable prices dropped to $20 per month. I'd imagine you'd get those ads in front of far more eyeballs, so increased ad rates would actually be beneficial. But let's not bring logic into capitalism.

  • At this point, I actively encourage people to boycott this thing. Steam Deck is better anyways.

37 comments