This guy makes great content. This vid made me subscribe.
I didn’t even think about the risk of duplicate certificates and Nintendo’s adverse reaction to it. Quite concerning.
I buy almost all games used. Moving forward, I think I’ll have to buy new or via discounted digital download code. MiG Switch (Russian owned) probably didn’t even think or care about that impact to the market.
But the idea of playing my own carts on PC via the adapter is quite appealing. I don’t want to give this company any money but would love to play my own cartridges with improved performance.
Nintendo Switch cartridge based games have a file that's unique to each individual cartridge. The dumper and accompanying flash cart make use of that file. If Nintendo detects two people playing while connected to the internet with the "same" cartridge, there's a high chance of them banning both consoles. So any used game anyone buys after this point runs the risk that someone dumped it, maybe an old owner who resold, maybe someone who bought and returned it, etc, which means even a legitimate user who hasn't even heard of the flash cart could get banned. There's also the potential issue of people using the tech in the flash cart once people figure out how to use those chips to sell bootlegged reproduction cartridges that have the same issue
Mmh… I suspect doing this is not legal in Europe as second hand have enforced laws.
Other laws like this (I suspect second hand Steam game licence) have been voted to protect customers from such behavior (in the mindset that customer don’t have to pay for company for having bad protection system).
Nintendo Switch cartridge based games have a file that’s unique to each individual cartridge. The dumper and accompanying flash cart make use of that file. If Nintendo detects two people playing while connected to the internet with the “same” cartridge, there’s a high chance of them banning both consoles. So any used game anyone buys after this point runs the risk that someone dumped it, maybe an old owner who resold, maybe someone who bought and returned it, etc, which means even a legitimate user who hasn’t even heard of the flash cart could get banned. There’s also the potential issue of people using the tech in the flash cart once people figure out how to use those chips to sell bootlegged reproduction cartridges that have the same issue
Oh wow, so they’ve poisoned the used market for Switch games. That’s disappointing.
Was technically possible to dump the unique cert with a modded Switch prior to this so even used games bought before could technically be impacted, but there was no real reason to do so since modded Switches and emulators would work just fine without it. Since it's required to use the flash cart this dumper is a companion to the risk goes up dramatically
Nintendo knows the PR hit for penalizing innocent customers would be pretty bad.
If a card ID is used by only two people I would expect it to be ignored, or if a device ID is only associated with one dupe card I would expect that to be ignored.
It’s the devices that use multiple dupe cards or the card IDs that are used by thousands of people that will get banned.
It will be interesting to see where they draw the line but its unlikely that they want too many false positives.
This problem did also exist on the 3DS but with the difference that you need a modded 3DS to copy the game. We can do nothing other than wait for Nintendo to respond to the first ban that happens because of identical certs.
I crack up at all the people on Lemmy insisting that this isn’t pirating or about pirating. Yes it is. I pirate too, don’t bullshit me guys. This isn’t about Nintendo being an evil company, cause they keep their games exclusive, just like Microsoft does with PC games and nobody bitches. This isn’t about Nintendo being selfish, it’s about people who want to copy switch games, mod them, share them, and act as if it’s a thing the copyright holder should be happy about lol
Again I pirate, so let’s be honest, this whole thing is about ways to easily pirate and backup switch games, not the integrity of gaming.
All the popular switch games have already been dumped & shared online. The cart that lets you download and play those came out MONTHS ago.
THIS cart is so you can download and backup your OWN Switch games, something I want just so I don’t lose my save data. Thanks for loudly assuring everyone that you know fuck-all about any of this though!
Not all games back up to the cloud and you nees an active NSO subscription to be able to backup to their cloud.
I haven’t seen this video yet (battery almost dead, gonna watch later) but this device appears to let you backup your saves locally without running it by Nintendo.
Edit: I forgot that Switch cartridges don’t hold saves so this device can’t do that.
On Switch, no game cards support writing of save data or anything else. It’s a departure from 3DS and all previous Nintendo cart formats for as long as games have supported saving at all.
That change is probably done to help tie saves to user accounts, enable cloud saves even when the card is not inserted, accommodate variable-size user data features like level creation, and mitigate the risk of game save based exploits like Twilight Hack spreading from user to user.
Unfortunately that (plus inability to put saves on SD card) means that backing up your own save data requires either being able to run homebrew on the system that has the save or having another Switch that can and relying on Nintendo servers to perform the transfer. Either way, having a Switch that runs homebrew means you don’t need this dumper.
The majority of people pirate, but insofar as there is a single person who wants to do literally anything else with their hacked system, then it isn’t exclusively about pirating, and the narrative to condemn the entire practice of hacking as being solely about pirating is nothing more than another corporation trying to make it harder for people to modify their own property as they see fit.
I think buddy is asking for honesty in the discussion. If your goal is piracy, just say so, don’t hide behind that one person who “wants to do literally anything else”.
You’re right, generally speaking, but most of us don’t fit into that category.
Don’t fight for yourself, fight for the community.
It doesn’t matter what I want, it matters what the community as a whole wants, and we want more than just pirating. Nobody’s hiding, we’re just not missing the forest for the trees; it’s not honesty in discussion to boil and entire group of people down to the desires of just the few people in this thread, it’s just being self-centered.
If you want to talk about what you as an individual want, feel free, but don’t act like it’s the definitive thing to discuss when the community is greater than all of us.
… I can’t tell if you’re serious or not, but if you’re honestly so put-off by human connection and comradery, I’m disappointed. Kind of a weird take from someone on Lemmy if that’s the case, though.
Haha, we’re in a digital age, buddy. Computers are nothing more than the latest way to connect real people in real ways. Sure, bots exist, just like spam telephone callers exist and were probably major issues when that was the main way for people to connect with one another across large distances, but you’re not going to stop it by covering your ears and denying the existence of every person you can’t physically see.
I have a wife and family, I have friends, and I have online communities I care about; they’re all just different legitimate social circles. We may not have evolved for it, but we’re living it anyway, and the faster you adapt to that, the better.
You can literally see that it’s a jpeg. Whatever, man. At this point you’re just trolling. But hey, that’s one of those human interactions that the internet made possible, so thanks for highlighting that for me.
Lol are you actually trying to convince me to take online communities seriously in this thread? Like I’ll actually change my mind based on what you say?
Thought we all knew this was a fuckabout
Real talk, make RL human connections, not doomosphere connections.
Steps towards being terminally online include caring about any online only group beyond normal consumption. Turn back!
As I mentioned, I have a wife who I live with and spend time with every day. We met online, and only later realized that we went to the same school, but were in different grades. We probably saw each other on multiple occasions, but we were just strangers then. I also have plenty of local friends who I spend time with as well. However, I live in completely different states from some of my oldest friends from school. We voice chat online every week, and meet up in person every few years.
I have a couple groups of people who I play video games and tabletop games with online who I’ve never even seen in real life, and wouldn’t even recognize walking down the street, but we’ve known each other for years and have real, meaningful connections. Two of the friends from one group even realized they live near one another, and have since begun dating, making plans to move in together soon.
And yes, I am a part of several online communities in forums, sites like Lemmy, and elsewhere that I keep up with. We have nice conversations and heated arguments. We help each other with problems and questions. We’re simply a group that any member knows they can turn to when they need to connect with someone.
Life is complicated, and there are an insane amount of different ways to connect with people. Amazingly, some of those are through the internet. The idea that some connections are real and the others are fake is complete bullshit, and you’re clearly making a bad argument in bad faith to let off some steam.
That’ll never happen so long as there’s the possibility of being sued for admitting you’re doing something that might be illegal. It’s simply not worth the risk to most people.
You mean you need a game cartridge and a Nintendo system to play a Nintendo game? Shocked, just like every console ever made, even up till now which require license verification within the game code?? Shocked.
But you want to go around Nintendo so you can “backup” and share the game and hack it and spread it to everyone for free, but that’s not pirating?? Dude I’m pro pirating, but to call this anything but pirating is such a lie
This comment explains pretty well about how this is going to potentially affect legitimate users, credit to neoman4426
Nintendo Switch cartridge based games have a file that’s unique to each individual cartridge. The dumper and accompanying flash cart make use of that file. If Nintendo detects two people playing while connected to the internet with the “same” cartridge, there’s a high chance of them banning both consoles. So any used game anyone buys after this point runs the risk that someone dumped it, maybe an old owner who resold, maybe someone who bought and returned it, etc, which means even a legitimate user who hasn’t even heard of the flash cart could get banned. There’s also the potential issue of people using the tech in the flash cart once people figure out how to use those chips to sell bootlegged reproduction cartridges that have the same issue
It’s also about how apparently games run better from a rom using an emulator on a switch rather than through the native software of the switch itself. It’s crazy.
This is the wrong crowd for that, mate. I’ve gone through this rodeo on Lemmy too many times and you’re just going to get dishonest people pretending that what they’re doing isn’t stealing. It’ll be everything from “preservation of games” to “it’s just like renting from a library” and all the extremes of dishonesty.
You’re being just as dishonest as the people you accuse in two different ways: there are people already in the replies to this comment admitting to the same things, as well as making unverified claims that “they’re actually pirating, they just won’t admit it”
Right, but for every one person who wants to do that, 9 others want to make money off a mod or spread the game for free, which benefits the creator not at all.
So are you gonna cite your sources for that 1-9 ratio? Still waiting on the source for your other comment about only 1% of gamers backup their games implying the other 99% use backups for piracy.
Wow you are biased. Piracy is a service problem. Therefore platforms with more service issues become targets for more advanced and rampant piracy. Nintendo basically deserved it. Not an honest people’s problem that it takes going that far to make the platform act as user friendly as they expected it to by default in the first place.
This case is not about pirating yourself but about a tool for creating more pirate copies, which will make it more convenient for end users, whether they will pay for it or not.
The issue you mentioned will likely not hit pirates negatively. As someone mentioned it’s not unique to this Nintendo console, so it’s the result of them not learning.
<shrug> I support things being hackable, dumpable, flashable, whatever. I also support piracy. But those two aren’t as interlinked as you want them to be.
Hacking because it’s ownership. Do what you want with the things that you own. Piracy because fuck 'em. That’s what happens when you make everything digital - it becomes much, much easier to acquire for free.
Outside of the small scene groups dumping new releases, why would someone wanting to pirate go to the trouble of buying a legit copy of a game and this device, only to dump the game resulting in effectively the same file that someone else has already put online?
The people who are putting game roms online generally aren’t randos. It’s scene release groups, who already have plenty of ways to dump carts without this, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing roms released same day or earlier than the shelf date.
You can already dump games with any Switch you can run homebrew (and therefore pirated games) on. I’ve done it with my carts so I don’t have to juggle the little things or bring a case with me. You don’t need this dumper to do it, or to get the files to put on the MiG flash card this is for. Normal dumps off the internet work fine in the cart for pirated game playing on newer switches.
So yeah, it’s a piracy device. But I just don’t see the use case here for it to meaningfully aid piracy at all.
Look, I have pirated games on a ton of consoles and handhelds, including the Switch, and I’ve also dumped my own carts/discs. One thing I’ve never done, or never heard of someone doing, is using one of these dumping tools and then selling the used copy of the game.
I’m sure there are people out there that have, and in the days of game rental stores people absolutely would rent a game and dump it, I used to do it with music CDs. It was harder to grab shit from the intenet back then though, so it was easier than downloading.
If I like a game enough to buy it, I’m not going to the trouble of getting an insulting amount for reselling it. If it was crap enough that I no longer wanted it, why would I dump the cart to a file?
Nowadays, you can download ten switch games in maybe an hour and a half, and every single game is downloadable normally on release day.
Why would you spend extra money on the dumper and lose money from reselling the game for less than you spent, when you can just download it for free?
Who knows, like you said, scene groups, maybe people who just want Internet points and want to upload files, people who just want the convenience of novelty. Same, I’ve dumped my own switch games via USB so this seems very just novelty to me and maybe it’s pick it up just to have it.
But yeah, gone are the days when you’d go rent a nes, snes games into floppies and needing a external dumping equipment so I don’t really know who this device is for but it’s interesting how many people are so defensive that you point out piracy device is mainly for piracy.
Ummm… If you own the game, making backups is perfectly legal. This isn’t piracy, this is hacking. I agree that most movie and game downloading IS PIRACY. This is not. It’s piracy if someone rips the files and distributes it. If they rip it for themselves, it’s not.
So yeah, it actually is a murky area here. You’d be going after everyone under the assumption of illegal activity vs actually targeting those commiting piracy.
The point is that this is not going to stop with someone backing up their games. Come on now let’s be honest. The internet is full of game ROMS that are “for backup only” again, come the fuck on. I’m not against pirating, but to say this isn’t it is just silly lol
A car can be used to drive from point A to point B. But sure some people have used it to ram through crowds of people to hurt or kill them. So hey, cars are murder devices. Amirite?
99.999% (or whatever) of the time cars are used to go from A to B and there’s no real thought about it. How many people do you really think make backups for purely personal storage redundancies? This feels more like grape juice and yeast kits (or whatever) from the prohibition era.
I’m sorry but no. Anyone who’s into collecting retro gaming console knows the importance of being able to back up your game cartridges. The technology isn’t infaillible. Especially over time.
Then it should be Nintendo’s problem to come up with a business model that doesn’t infringe upon their customers’ property rights, not society’s problem to give up everybody’s rights just to enable Nintendo’s DRM-based business model!
Because it’s fucking pointless to respond when one side won’t even admit to piracy being a thing.
One person asked for evidence for piracy, which we all know happens, it’s not a minor thing but sources are all over the place, and everyone going ‘see piracy isn’t a thing’. Well proves the other side then. Prove how many people only use these devices legitimately.
You can’t. You can only say legitimate uses happen, piracy uses happen. And don’t fucking bullshit me that those rcm jigs were mostly sold for homebrew only.
It’s a pointless conversation at this point because I asked for evidence and the response is strawman, changing the topic to justification, just like the NRA does and there’s no benefit to continue and just leave it at that.
And? I’d say less than 1% pirate. I can throw in random unfounded metrics too. Still doesn’t change the point. Just because you don’t doesn’t mean someone else won’t. Which again isn’t even the point of the article.
The point is someone could backup their game and sell it. The buyer being unaware it would ban their console.
Saying theres no legit way to use these is exactly why yuzu was so easily taken down, so even if youre pro or anti piracy, spreading false information about this is harmful to the hacking community.
Yuzu was taken down because lawyers and people who follow the letter of the law said it was illegal. Which it was. You think it happened cause of a random internet opinion?
Anyways this is the funniest thread on Lemmy. A bunch of fellow pirates doing pirate shit and pretending like they’re doing altruism lol
Then you punish the actual criminals, not everyone.
There are plenty of us who prefer the steam deck over the switch. You can pull the encryption keys from your own console and the roms from your own games and play them there. There are numerous tutorials to do so.
People use knives to stab people. Should we ban all knives?
You’re being hyperbolic and narrow-minded.
Backing up a game is legal. End of story. There’s plenty of legal precedent there already. So you’re literally arguing that the law is not the law because of your emotional feelings.
You want to change that? Change the law. Stop being a jackass on social here tho spouting bad takes when you just don’t agree.
People use knives to stab people. Should we ban all knives?
Actually in plenty countries, plenty types of knives are not legal to carry because their primary purpose (of the type) is in attacking people, which is never a valid reason to have it as a result.
Much like how with the US exception, most industrialized nations don’t allow free ownership of most guns.
So if anything, that’s a bad argument to make as there’s a lot of precedent suggesting banning such dumping devices entirely might be warranted. I wouldn’t support that, but the argument you try to use as a defense exactly supports a ban.
Mind you, the ban would be on buying/owning/importing such a device, not in the actual dumping. As in, you are legally allowed to dump your games, only you cannot acquire the device to do so as it has been shown to be primarily meant to be used for illegal purposes (usually this would mean there are privosion so that for scientific/research purposes you can acquire them).
An example would be the R4 import/purchase ban in a few countries.
So, only knives that have no legitimate purpose other than to cause harm are banned? A switch blade is banned while a filet knife is not. Both knives are equally capable of being tools for murder, but the filet knife can be used in hunting, fishing, and cooking. All legitimate uses. While the switchblade isn’t really feasible in any scenario outside of a fight.
It’s not the presence of illegitimate uses that gives rise to the ban. It’s the absence of legitimate uses.
I guess it depends on what you call pirating. Is it okay for me to emulate switch games I own on my steamdeck? It prevents me from having to carry around two devices, and in some cases the games run better. I that situation I’ve paid everyone I’m supposed to.
Yeah, cause I should have rights with things I purchase. You’re allowed to record anything over the radio, you can record anything that comes over broadcast/cable TV. That’s not pirating that’s the law. Why should this be any different and why should it matter if I get it physically or digitally.
As everyone is saying, it doesn’t matter if the primary purpose of this is piracy, because this enables legal behavior through the same process as the piracy. You cannot say that this is illegal because it is not piracy until you take the output of this and do something else with it.
But also it sucks that we have to discuss these things with false pretense to avoid Youtube content bans and stuff like that.
But that is the reality of the world we live in, and Nintendo DOES suck and IS an evil company when it comes to consumers rights.
For the record, I do not pirate anything presently. At a certain point in my life I decided that I could go without things or buy them. But I don’t judge for people making the opposite choice.
I feel like devices like this aren’t really under a false pretense though. Most people who would pirate games like this probably wouldn’t buy a third party device so they can copy a friend’s cartridge so they can emulate it, they’d more likely just download it and skip the middle man.
The only real way I see it being used primarily for piracy is in areas where Internet activity is heavily monitored/restricted, or broadband isn’t available/accessible. Otherwise a 1 month subscription to a VPN and a few gigabyte of Internet usage is far cheaper and easier to a pirate.
Selling bootleg copies would still count as piracy, as would returning the game after copying it. But your point point makes sense. This device’s main focus is probably not those cases.
But emulators are a thing that we usually stress the legal use-cases when the majority use-case is piracy. So it’s kind of an area where pretense is required, and the earlier video reviewing the cartridge and this one reviewing the copying device both go out of their way to make it clear that they aren’t talking about the piracy use-case and that they still think their video will be taken down.
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