this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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I'm not aware of them doing this all that often. In fact, it's more something that game developers do from time to time, rather than Nintendo specifically. The classic one being when they introduce a bug that only affects the pirated release, then every time they get a report on that bug they know the user pirated their copy.
Yeah I'm not sure what exactly they're referring to. if they're referring to the N64 games that was the developer Rare who did it, not Nintendo, Nintendo is just the publisher. If it's related to Switch games then it's possible they're referring to Online only games or the many many Piracy-related myths as well as disinformation that plagues the Switch Modding scene to this day.
I mean I've been running a cracked Switch for years, and while my finger isn't on the pulse entirely I'm not aware of any of this either. They definitely ban people (I've had one banned) but even then you can still use the device, just not online or in their store (as if you were in there much anyway).
The bigger issue in the Switch modding scene is that half the developers are divas.
Some examples of the misinformation include:
banning preventing people from using Installed Software (one person actually referred to it as bricked)
Bans preventing use of Wifi hardware (FTP or Local play)
Banned Cartridges will get other Switches banned, or that cartridges are still getting banned
Things like that are the most egregious ones.
Lately though it's mostly been what is ban worthy and what isn't. For that there are two camps, there are the conspiracy minded, and there are the more reasonable people.
For conspiracy theorists it's as simple as plugging in RCM (or Booting from the Modchip if they have that instead) and booting into Stock, that's enough for them to consider ban worthy. Some of them draw the line later at the actual firmware but the thing that these claims usually share is that they lack data backing them. It's usually influencers who make these types of claims (hence why it's become a cultural phenomenon, Yay 😒).
The more reasonable ones group the actions that are and aren't ban worthy through testing and historical evidence which is mainly:
Guaranteed Ban:
Things that don't cause bans:
Things still up for debate:
(They also give methods for preventing bans, unlike the first kind of people like Using emuMMC to separate Identities, blocking Nintendo domains in the hosts file, and even using Incognito to erase the Identifier data.)
Unfortunately Popular Culture tends to prefer the first type of person's opinion so I've found that when discussing Homebrew with people outside of the community it can lead to some pretty nutty arguments, even going back to ones from before, such as banning cartridges.
That is very true, many of them are assholes, I visited GBAtemp's politics section and was astonished to find out how many of them are Bigots, at least judging by the crap they spouted about "pronouns being forced" and "not wanting to call a man Ma'am" really disgusting shit that no respectable person should ever say. Nor should any forum ever put up with (basically GBAtemp is a Nazi bar).
Those all just seem like misunderstandings from users who aren't tech savvy, coupled with a little bit of urban legend gossip.
Hah, yeah homebrew stuff isn't generally meant for proper conversation. You're either interested and ok with it, or you see it as just about piracy.
Yeah I think many of them serious misunderstandings by the people who posted the videos and articles, though also some of them seem to have been to cause fear since many of them tried to make it seem like they knew what they were talking about.
I don't think the ones who talked about systems being bricked actually knew what bricked means since they also said in the same breath "it can only play cartridges", which isn't what happens when bricked, in fact as I know from recovering a Switch with Prodinfo_gen that's one of the things a previously bricked system likely can't do if you had to generate a new prodinfo from scratch without a donor.
I could normally forgive the wifi misconception normally, however in the case of the person who was talking about Wifi not working when banned they explicitly stated that Local play between Switches won't work anymore, even when offline, which obviously isn't correct.
In the case of cartridge banning which was a thing it was always the cartridges themselves that were banned, but many news outlets both tried to frame it as if it was the user who would get their account banned, they also tried to make it seem like it's an Ongoing issue and that it's the end of used game sales.
I agree that homebrew stuff isn't really the best thing to talk about with most people who don't understand it well enough, usually does come up though in discussions whenever I open my Home Screen since I do have custom Themes with Wildly different layouts that obviously aren't stock (this is the one I'm using at the moment, but I have a few others I cycle through to keep things fresh).