Nintendo Switch Piracy Isn’t a Smart Idea, One Hacker Says

While the game industry is thriving with a lot of titles selling millions of copies, there's still the seedy underbelly of it in which game pirates thrive on "cracking" games or selling illegal goods that, if caught by developers or publishers, could result in rather hurtful bans.

But one company that seems to have its anti-piracy tools in order is Nintendo. And a story from a hacker explains why would-be pirates shouldn't mess with the house that built Mario.

Per this report from Reddit, a hacker by the name of SciresM has explained why it's just not worth it when it comes to pirating Nintendo Switch games. Sure, some people may be saying, "Ah, but what's the worst they can do?" Apparently quite a bit.

He noted that when you connect games online it does so through a registered Nintendo account. So whether you're using a digital download or a game cartridge plugged into the system, the publisher has a lot of measures in place.

SciresM was rather impressed by this, noting that the publisher has "extremely strong measures" that can detect pirated games from a mile away. "Nintendo did a great job, here," he noted.

And here's how each one breaks down:

"In the Game Card case, Nintendo can detect whether or not the user connecting has data from a Nintendo-authorized Game Card for the correct title. This solves the 3DS-era issue of Game Card header data being shared between games. Additionally, there's a fair amount of other, unknown (encrypted) data in a certificate being uploaded — and certificates are also linked to Nintendo Accounts when gold points are redeemed. Sharing of certificates should be fairly detectable, for Nintendo.

"In the digital game case, Nintendo actually perfectly prevents online piracy here. Tickets cannot be forged, and Nintendo can verify that the device ID in the ticket matches the device ID for the client cert connecting (banning on a mismatch), as well as that the account ID for the ticket matches the Nintendo Account authorizing to log in. Users who pirate games definitionally cannot have well-signed tickets for their consoles, and thus cannot connect online without getting an immediate ban – this is exactly how I would have implemented authorization for digital games, if I were them."

That said, some people are finding certain work-arounds with the Switch. Earlier this year we talked about a hacker that was trying to implement Virtual Console games on the system since Nintendo won't be introducing the service to it. We're not sure if he's made any additional progress on it but it doesn't sound like he could get in trouble with Nintendo unless he connects online.

So there you go, pirates. Try to crack as many games as you want but Nintendo is keeping a very close eye out for you.