- Nintendo has warned software pirates it could remotely disable their Switch. The policy change was included in a recent User Agreement update. Nintendo has a history of battles with software pirates.
Nintendo is stepping up its efforts to fight piracy.
As it prepares to launch the Switch 2, the video game giant has updated its user agreement, informing Switch owners that if that console is found to contain pirated games or modifications, Nintendo has the right to remotely render the system useless.
The announcement, spotted by Game File, was buried in a recent update that most users likely didn’t read. Should users “bypass, modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or otherwise circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Nintendo Account Services,” it reads, Nintendo might make that “applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.”
Nintendo has a long history of fighting back against piracy, including emulator programs, which let players run games without the original console (and are often used to play pirated games). Dolphin, an open-sourced emulator for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube, was a target of the gaming giant in 2023 when it announced plans to put its emulator on the Steam game distribution platform. Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist order to Valve, which pulled the listing. Days later, Dolphin’s developers announced “It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed.”
“Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers,” a spokesperson for Nintendo told Kotaku in May of 2023.
Last year, the company successfully shut down the Yuzu emulator, saying the team behind it had facilitate[ed] piracy at a colossal scale.” The Yuzu team agreed to pay $2.4 million and ended all operations.
Remotely disabling a gaming system is a new approach, however. Nintendo, of course, did not detail how it would do so, but the company regularly issues system updates, which could include code meant to sniff out emulators or unauthorized copies of games.