Nintendo’s new anti-piracy measures seem to be doing exactly as they planned- and they’re pretty happy about it.
A Redditor, SciresM, broke down exactly how they work in a post. He says that when you go online with your Switch, Nintendo will run a check on whether or not you have data coming from an authorized game card for the title. If it’s legitimate, your console will get a unique ticket that allows you to play it online. If not, your cartridge will be banned from being able to be played online and you could be banned from the Nintendo Network. Pirated games seem to automatically trigger such a ban.
He then talks about how Nintendo “perfectly” prevents online piracy because these tickets can make it easy for Nintendo do detect when games are pirated and shared between people. They can verify the ID associated with the ticket and make sure it matches the ID for the device that’s using it. If they’re different, the game gets banned. And the tickets can’t be created or generated like serial keys.
At this point, we’re unsure if illegal games could work offline, but it seems like it’ll only protect against games being played online as they require an active connection to the internet.
This new measure is likely due to a security issue Nintendo had wehere two exploits in the hardware of the Switch was publicly revealed. Nintendo has since strengthened their stance on piracy:
“Nintendo opposes those who benefit and trade off the creative work of game developers, artists, animators, musicians, motion capture artists and others,” the website reads. “Piracy continues to be a significant threat to Nintendo’s business, as well as to the businesses of more than 1,400 game development companies that work to provide games for Nintendo systems. Most importantly, game developers and publishers depend on the legitimate sales of their games in order to survive.
“Piracy discourages innovation and new game development; it can also lead to a reduction in the number of jobs available within the industry, all of which ultimately impacts the consumer.”
Writer and journalist for almost a year. Doing this for fun. Learned a lot along the way. I’m interested in businesses and the moves they make, tech and how it changes the world, and of course, enjoy playing some video games! I enjoy console and PC, but mostly RPGs, FPS, and League of Legends.