this post was submitted on 11 May 2025

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Nintendo Updates Its User Agreement To Crack Down On Emulation (www.nintendolife.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

80 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In short, if you happen to hack your Switch or run emulators, you may find that it winds up getting bricked entirely.

Nintendo is Nintendoing again!

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And how exactly do they intend to detect or prevent emulation?

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 2 weeks ago

This is why I pirate.

I'm tired of companies telling me what I can and can't do with something I've purchased.

Anyways. I'll be gaming on my PC if anyone needs me.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Groovy. All they're doing is making me more certain that I will not move above my 3DS. At least, not until there's a guaranteed CFW for Switch.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

At least, not until there's a guaranteed CFW for Switch.

There is for early models of the Switch:

https://switch.hacks.guide/user_guide/getting_started.html

If you are interested you’ll have to buy a used one, older is more likely to work.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

Well, I wouldn't buy anything but a used one - do you think I'm going to give any money to Ninty's lawyers?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is the only thing giving me any slight of interest in wanting to get a switch 2. I have an early switch and its pretty cool what it can do when hacked

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

We got lucky in 2017, I suspect it'll be a good long while before the switch 2 gets hacked, specifically in an accessible way.

A hacked switch (or even switch 2 really, looking at the specs) is really just a shitty steam deck that can run Nintendo games natively.

I wouldn't recommend forking over 500 bucks for something you may be able to jailbreak one day, when 400 can get you more out of the box.

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[+] [email protected] -46 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

This Community : but but but. I only use emulators to play my backed up cartridges I've never pirated one game before.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Pirating Nintendo games is a good deed. Everyone should be proud of it.

[–] [email protected] 73 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Nintendo could make fucking bank if it was easier to actually pay them to play their old games. They have no leg to stand on since I can’t.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

They're not stupid, they're manipulative. In my experience, that's always the case in situations like these.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

nintendo does not want you to play their old titles, theyve been quoted saying "emulation stifles innovation" to me this just says that we cant play old games because it makes their new ones look bad. Nintendo is pulling a call of duty on us, just re-releasing games with a fresh coat of paint and a new gimmick for example MK with its new open world. Zelda with an open world. Smash brothers, Pokemon... you get it. Dont get me wrong i love these games and IPs, but the games have barely changed since 64. I will say the new DK and MK titles look great, but Ill just wait till we can fully emulate switch 2 and keep my money.

Plus i wont have to worry about them bricking my PC. The last good hardware theyve released was the 3ds and wii u. but they only became great when the modding scene stepped in and made them so. They are clearly worried about the modding scene, dumping games, and adding emulators for old titles. To me, nintendo is dead and has been for a while. The dev teams within nintendo are still pushing out gold. Whilst everyone else there is looking to fuck over the consumer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’ve only played Nintendo games on-and-off but the last truly special innovation I can remember to the Mario formula was the Super Mario Galaxy games. I can’t recall anything else like it that they’ve done recently

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Breath of the wild definitely comes to mind. The combat and puzzles in that game are an absolute treat. The amount of tools they give the player is unlike anything ive played before, heres a decent clip as an example

https://youtu.be/SLdtdhGobqg

But before that... yeah mario galaxy and metroid prime were pretty much all i can think of off the top of my head.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I couldn't dislike Breath of the Wild any more than I do. BotW changed Zelda for no good reason, and IMO, was not an improvement. A 6/10 at best if I ignore "Zelda" in the title. Put simply, BotW is among the worst games in the Zelda franchise, up there with Zelda 2 and the CDi games, as a Zelda game.

While the clip you provided is interesting, it features gameplay that was absolutely not intended by Nintendo, and part of the reason why they removed a lot of the abilities that let you do this from Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo would patch the game to remove that if they could do it without kneecapping the entire rest of the game.

Combat is tedious. Weapons have less durability than literal glass weapons in the Elder Scrolls games. Why should I get into combat when I know I am going to end up destroying 80% of the weapons in my inventory at minimum? This is completely ignoring Master Mode, which is really just "Enemy Health x10 Mode" or whatever the multiplier is. Youre not going to be able to get into any fight in the game with more than 4 enemies and have enough weapons for that, even with max Weapon Inventory slots.

The Master Sword, legendary blade that rends evil in a fell swish? Yeah... you can only use it for like, 10 minutes. And then its locked away from you for another 10 minutes while it "recharges." What, do I need to make a reservation with the sword so it can check its schedule before I get into every fight? Make sure its back from its vacation?

The puzzles are easy. Like, mind numbingly easy. No dungeon-wide puzzles that take thought and spatial awareness in this game (or honestly, Tears of the Kingdom either for that matter). Zelda dungeons were the cornerstone of the game design. Each had a unique theme, memorable music, and complex design that essentially turned the entire dungeon into a puzzle itself. BotW "shrines" are cookie-cutter, copy-paste, made-in-3-minutes lookalikes. All of them easily solvable in less time it took you to get the shrine to spawn out of the floor. The "divine beasts" are even worse, but at least they are kinda unique in their textures. Unless you do more than one, because all 4 of them use identical textures.

The story was garbage. Not only because it barely existed, but because all the interesting parts happened off-screen. Same exact problem Halo had with Halo 5 and Infinite. I want to play the story the randomly shuffled cutscenes showed me, not see all the cool stuff happen when I can't do anything. That cheapens the experience.

Oh yeah. That mountain you want to climb? Rain. Always rain. Go ahead, start climbing. The game will force rain to start.

Literally the best way to play BotW is fully modded with infinite weapon durability and changing Link into Linkle. At least then I can pretend its a spin-off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Agreed, Its barely a zelda game but regardless of how easy the puzzles were, they were fun. But yes there were too many and 100%ing the game was an absolute slog because of the similarity between alot of the shrines

"Combat was tedious" sure. If your bad at the game, alot of attacks are parryable and weapons and food are craftable. Even if i wasnt equipped to deal with a situation the enviroment always provides alternative ways to deal with enemies.

"zelda dungeons were the cornerstone of game design" I have to disagree zelda dungeons have always been either bullshit or as you put it mind numbingly easy and tedious. They were innovative for sure, but they were often obnoxiously long. Stopping for a few days and coming back to the game youd forget wtf you were doing and why. The music however i agree with, botw does not have a single track i remember off the top of my head.

The story was always trash. Except majoras mask and minish cap. But i agree about the cutscenes, Its not hard to tell a story through gameplay, so its lazy for sure.

All that said, i never gave botw a shining review. I just said that they actually TRIED something different. Even if it wasnt executed that well.

ALSO how tf are you not going to mention the final boss fight of botw? That shit had my jaw on the floor with how tedious and ass that was.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Ohhh yeah still haven’t played that one, I’ve heard so many good things about it though

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

If I ever get sued by nintendo for some reason I'm making a large part of my case to try and convince investors how much money they could make having games available on pc, I doubt I could win a lawsuit but I will do my best to be a seed that changes your company forever

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago

They could literally just sell ROM files, bring your own emulator

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 weeks ago

It boggles my mind that they aren't just packaging up old games into an exe and posting them one by one on Steam. Its free money.

[+] [email protected] -12 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

How is retropie still able to operate? Seems like 9 out of 10 people who buy a raspberry pi are using it with retropie to play retro games. Seems like something that holds that much of the emulator industry share would be targeted by Nintendo.

Subsequently, if I know someone who knows someone who has a retropie for gaming, what's the worst case scenario that could come from Nintendo shutting down retropie's ability to provide the means to emulate? Will it be fine as long as the OS isn't updated any further? Just run the emulators and roms already installed on it as long as no new emulators or roms are added after the possible crack down?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You can say 9 out of 10 buying a raspberry pie are setring up retro pie for emulating, but 98 out of 100 people emulating aren't using a raspberry pie to do it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean the statement was heavily implied to be anecdotal to my experience but I'll add to it by also saying I haven't met a single person who runs an emulator console using anything but raspberry pi hardware.

What are the 98 out 100 people that you know using? Mini desktops?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

You're just speaking of dedicated emulator systems? I'd agree with those numbers of yours then. I was just speaking of what people use to emulate old games in general. Almost everyone just uses a pc, laptop, or cell phone. The numbers for dedicated systems that look like retro Gameboys and stuff like that are outnumbered by like 100 to 1.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Nintendo can't control anyone else's hardware, they can't stop you from doing what you want on a Raspberry Pi. They're trying to crack down on Switch modding, but even that's just a cat-and-mouse game.

You will not get in trouble for emulating at home. Emulation itself is legal, it's only illegal to download games you don't own. But it's nearly impossible for anyone to get caught doing that, and very obviously not worth any lawyer's time to pursue individual end users for pennies in damages. You are safe.

What Nintendo wants to do is attack piracy at the source. They can go after sites that distribute ROMs, but those are like a hydra, kill one and three more take its place. Then there's the likes of Yuzu and Ryujinx, where Nintendo claims to have found some technicality about these emulators having something they shouldn't. But the forks are still being distributed, and you the end user will not get in trouble for downloading the fork at home.

Note that for the most part, they're really only concerned with protecting their current hardware. They've never gone after Dolphin, Snes9x, mGBA, etc, because they know those are battles they can't win. Considering how aggressive Nintendo is on the battles they do fight, it's clear that anything Nintendo doesn't go after is something they can't go after.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Fuck me 10/10 response. Thank you that answered so many of my questions.

Maybe it's just a coincidence that because I switched to Lemmy almost 2 years ago I started seeing more IT related news and thats why im seeing so many more articles about Nintendo shutting down as much pirated material as they can. Or is it that they only recently started this crusade? If so, do you have any more information as to why they started making this a priority in the past couple years?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

I'd never thought of it in these specific terms before, but the essentially educational and fear-ameliorating nature of your post led me to realize that it's likely that a lot of what Nintendo's doing with all of this legal barnstorming is essentially PR, and that's all it's meant to be.

They have little hope of actually winning cases or of doing anything more than cutting off one head of the hydra if they do, and all of their safeguards can be and will be worked around, repeatedly if necessary, so from a practical standpoint, they're fighting a losing battle. But all of their noise and aggressive posturing likely serves to scare a lot of less-informed gamers into not emulating in the first place, so it furthers their goals anyway.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean it's still important to walk an emulators for current Hardware while we still have modern working examples and can capture Network packets and whatnot but I'm not totally against the idea of Simply holding your insights from public consumption for a while out of practicality alone

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago

I agree, it's important to preserve things today because it may be too late tomorrow. Some Switch titles have already been delisted, so it's good that we backed them up early.

But I'm just explaining it from Nintendo's perspective. If the tools we use to restore Super Mario Bros. 35 can also be used to crack Tears of the Kingdom, they don't want those tools in our hands.

The more important point though is that it is all cat-and-mouse, and the mouse is winning. We have those tools, and they can't fully stop it.

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[–] [email protected] 160 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm gonna emulate even harder now.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 weeks ago

Right? This just makes me want to emulate every Nintendo everything from now on.

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