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Inside the Messy, Dark Side of Nintendo Switch Piracy (vice.com)
Doxing rivals, stealing each other's files, and poking around Nintendo's servers are all a normal part of the ballooning Nintendo Switch hacking and piracy scenes. Joseph Cox, reports for Motherboard: The Switch piracy community -- much of which operates on the gamer-focused chat app Discord -- is full of ingenuity, technical breakthroughs, and evolving cat-and-mouse games between the multi-billion dollar Nintendo and the passionate hackers who love the company but nonetheless illegally steal its games. Pirates deploy malware to steal each other's files so they can download more games themselves. Groups deliberately plant code into others' Switches so they no longer work. And some people in the scene have been doxed, meaning they've had their personal information published online.
Pirating games for the Switch is not technically straightforward. Instead, there's a complex supply chain constantly grinding away that helps people source and play unreleased games. There are reverse engineers who figure out how Nintendo's own tools work, so hackers can then use them for their own advantage. There are coders who make programs to streamline the process of downloading or running games. Reviewers, developers, or YouTubers with access to games before general Switch users often leak unlock codes or other information to small groups, which then may trickle out to the wider community.
[...] To release a game, pirates may dump a copy from the physical cartridge; they can do this before the game releases in the United States by sourcing the cartridge from an Australian store, which releases earlier because of the time difference. But this only gets a game out one or two days before official release. For the more sought-after and early dumps, pirates often manage to grab a copy from Nintendo's eShop, the company's digital download game store that is built into the Switch. Here, pirates will likely use a piece of hacker-made software on their computers to talk to Nintendo's servers, one pirate who uploads large archives of games explained to Motherboard in an online chat. The files can sometimes be downloaded early by anyone (by design), and are encrypted and need a so-called "titlekey" to unlock them and make the game playable. Further reading: Nintendo 'Wins' $12 Million From Pirate ROM Site Operators.
Pirating games for the Switch is not technically straightforward. Instead, there's a complex supply chain constantly grinding away that helps people source and play unreleased games. There are reverse engineers who figure out how Nintendo's own tools work, so hackers can then use them for their own advantage. There are coders who make programs to streamline the process of downloading or running games. Reviewers, developers, or YouTubers with access to games before general Switch users often leak unlock codes or other information to small groups, which then may trickle out to the wider community.
[...] To release a game, pirates may dump a copy from the physical cartridge; they can do this before the game releases in the United States by sourcing the cartridge from an Australian store, which releases earlier because of the time difference. But this only gets a game out one or two days before official release. For the more sought-after and early dumps, pirates often manage to grab a copy from Nintendo's eShop, the company's digital download game store that is built into the Switch. Here, pirates will likely use a piece of hacker-made software on their computers to talk to Nintendo's servers, one pirate who uploads large archives of games explained to Motherboard in an online chat. The files can sometimes be downloaded early by anyone (by design), and are encrypted and need a so-called "titlekey" to unlock them and make the game playable. Further reading: Nintendo 'Wins' $12 Million From Pirate ROM Site Operators.
It isn't stealing unless the person stolen from doesn't have the property anymore. Period. Unless you want to discuss silly concepts like stealing a kiss, in which case, I fully support the use of the term in such a positive fashion.
It's called pirating. Illegally copying (especially since you mentioned illegal stealing, it's not even any more clumsy). Just use the right terminology, because right now I'm imagining a bunch of hackers wanting revenge on each other because their code keeps going missing.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sounds like Nintendo have created a successful advanced ARG for their dedicated fans.
The summary reads like an attempt to cram as many instances of "piracy" and "hacker" into the text as possible. There are other reasons people crack their Switches or other consoles, including running homebrew or just simply to explore how these devices work behind the scenes. Not everyone who is interested in hacking their Switch is interested in pirating Switch games.
One example is the lack of save game backup support like the Wii and Wii U had. We had over a year of Switch with no mechanism for backups available. Nintendo Online allows backups but certain titles opt out and there is no solution from Nintendo for backups of those. However, hacked Switches have been able to dump saved games to SD cards for months now. The hacker community does what Nintendon't.
Yes, that is what they were going for... but it totally backfired. Pirates are fun and everyone loves them.
I want to see a torrent site that carries only works that glorify sea piracy, such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Sid Meier's Pirates!.
It's more a "down with hype, up with technology". Cracking games isn't as easy anymore as it was when I was young, today it becomes more and more a game of cryptography and breaking encryption. One has to wonder why they toy with games instead of going after more lucrative targets.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Are you afraid they'll mess with your online games of [...] "Mafia Syndicate game #154"?
With Nintendo and affiliated companies bringing out new Mario and Pikachu movies, you're seeing "MAFIAA Syndicate" play out before you.
When you play the game like Nintendo does it, then you breed piracy. Games that take years to drop in price, exclusive content, rigorous control over the environment, total disrespect of their customers.
There are many reasons to break software free of the DRM grips of these kinds of businesses. If nintendo wants to provide me a walled garden with exclusive content and watch what I do, then they need to give it to me for free. I am not going to pay for this type treatment.
I don't feel sorry for consumers of Nintendo products, they have more than proven who and what kind of business they are. They have no honor!
Piracy permanently takes away the sole "right to copy" from the owner. ...Not to mention the future potential profits.
This is self-contradicting.
You're pitching this idea as though that would be unreasonable to ask for, but I don't owe Nintendo money for their investment choices. When we consider that they're currently distributing proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software that can be remotely disabled (via digital restrictions management and server dependencies based on servers that aren't distributed but can go away) I see no incentive to buy. The specific price of the game doesn't even enter into this; I'm not objecting to paying for a game, I object to submitting to a proprietor's power, a power that subjects me to watching my investment disappear due to disablement, spying, and other proprietary software ills. That's not worth any price to me. So I choose to do without and they don't get any of my money.
Considered from another perspective, it could be argued that they used to do precisely what you describe. Consider how they ran their company for a while—they sold copies of ROM-based games users used to be able to run in perpetuity so long as they had functioning equipment to run the programs on. Eventually people figured out how to make copies of those games and share those copies but Nintendo was still in business making more such games. With the older systems there was no disparity between what users and Nintendo were able to do because the games were in ROM: Nintendo didn't have any power to change the program beyond what the user could do using the equipment Nintendo sold them (such as a Super Nintendo console). That's a sharp difference from investing in something one can't run (like can be the case with Nintendo Switch software). We don't even know all of what it would take to get Nintendo to disable one's copy of a Switch game. Perhaps we'll find out that Nintendo is more censorious than people thought they were; perhaps Nintendo will use their unjust proprietor power on Switch users who dare to criticize them.
Digital Citizen