Nintendo seems able to detect use of Mig Flash carts, which can also help enable piracy.
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Playing personal game “backups” could get your Switch 2 banned by Nintendo
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Sypher the 297th
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
And this is why I don't buy from Nintendo anymore. They believe they are the only ones with property rights. Frankly it's becoming increasingly apparent that Miyamoto was always just another greedy suit who got famous off the work of others for so many years.
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Banning someone for using their own backup would be a violation of the law. Should be interesting to see Nintendo dragged into court over this.
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Personal game backups are EXPLICITLY protected by the DMCA. Nintendo has zero legal backing on this one.
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Other than the convenience feature of having a single cartridge contain all your games, what legitimate reason exists for playing game backups on a Switch at the moment?
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Jakelshark
Ars Tribunus Militum
to play devil's advocate, citing a careless child prone to losing small cartridges
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The number of people who are using a MIG like the people supposedly are doing in this article are in the extreme minority. Like lets be frank here and acknowledge that MIGs are generally used for piracy in some capacity.
The fact that MIGs are universally looked as piracy tools by Nintendo shouldn't then shock anybody.
Also I find it funny that the usual anti-Nintendo trolls are out using this as another data point against Nintendo. As if Sony and MS let you make "backups" of physical discs and use them on their consoles right?
The fact that MIGs are universally looked as piracy tools by Nintendo shouldn't then shock anybody.
Also I find it funny that the usual anti-Nintendo trolls are out using this as another data point against Nintendo. As if Sony and MS let you make "backups" of physical discs and use them on their consoles right?
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Nintendo certainly thinks they are in the clear here
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/Roms/comments/14oil2i/according_to_nintendo_via_their_official_website/
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I really hate the Nintendo fanboys who swarm these threads and downvote anyone who slightiy criticizes Nintendo or their products.
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"Because I want to" is the only reason you need to do anything with your own private property.
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Nintendo gonna Nintendo. At this point, if you don't just submit to Nintendo's strict and sometimes bizarre interpretation of IP law, you will be attacked whether the law agrees with Nintendo or not.
Steam has shown that you don't have to be an asshole to your users to be (wildly) profitable, but I guess that's foreign to a corporate culture that seems unwilling to even fully acknowledge studios and devs in game credits. All credit, rights, and cash to Papa Nintendo!
Steam has shown that you don't have to be an asshole to your users to be (wildly) profitable, but I guess that's foreign to a corporate culture that seems unwilling to even fully acknowledge studios and devs in game credits. All credit, rights, and cash to Papa Nintendo!
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Can a banned console still get updates for the games/console itself?
And at this point, how many switch games need to be updated to be played from the cartridge itself...
And at this point, how many switch games need to be updated to be played from the cartridge itself...
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So tired of corporations acting in the best interest of profit at the cost of everything else. Greed may have been a valid survival instinct once, but it is destroying humanity's ability to survive now....
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My dog ate my cartridge. Or my two-year-old kid took my cartridges and threw them in the bathtub. Good thing I have a backup...
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This is probably not the argument Nintendo would use in court, they would likely argue that this is was not because of copyright infringement, but that making these backups violate their user agreement.
It is a dumb policy, but courts might side with Nintendo in the US and either way none of these users could probably afford a lawsuit over it.
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While piracy is probably the overwhelming use for Mig Flash as a whole, I think there are a significant number of people who like owning physical Switch games but don't want to have to carry around/swap a bunch of game cards on the go, and the Mig Flash would be legitimately useful for that use case.
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As always, it is the 99% who use these tools for piracy that give the remaining 1% a bad name.
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Nintendo does not believe there is such a thing as a legal backup, nor does it believe there is such a thing as fair use for reviews, nor owning your devices, nor repairing it, nor Emulating games you own ( and dumped yourself ) - Actually Emulators are not a legal thing either ( for Nintendo ).
Basically, at this point, I wonder who believes that there is any reason Nintendo is something they can throw money at, just buy a Rog Ally or Steamdeck, there is literally nothing innovative on the switch, neither as platform, nor as as HW.
Basically, at this point, I wonder who believes that there is any reason Nintendo is something they can throw money at, just buy a Rog Ally or Steamdeck, there is literally nothing innovative on the switch, neither as platform, nor as as HW.
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Nintendo has the right not to allow any system to connect to its servers (Valve, Microsoft, Sony, etc. all do the same). Nintendo's not actively bricking these consoles or somehow breaking into people's homes and taking their Switch 2s.
Also, breaking DRM for backups is explicitly prohibited by the DMCA.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
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If your original cartridge is damaged, you're still entitled to the software on it. This was common in the 2000's with scratched CD's. Same logic applies here. I bought the physical media AND its contents.
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It doesn't take a "Nintendo fanboy" to recognize that the "criticism" is either invalid or unnecessarily targeted at Nintendo when it is a criticism of the home console industry altogether. I don't see Sony or Microsoft condoning running "backup discs" on PS5 or XBox Series systems, in fact, dealing with it similarly, but here we are with the "slight criticism" being "Fuck Nintendo, I'm not even buying Mario gummies because they are anti-customer!"
"Backups" are ignored on old systems, but if you want to play current gen "backups", stick to PC emulation (edit) or keep the system offline while playing it (/edit) and understand that the companies are protective of what they can sell today.
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I want to be outraged. But any estimates on the proportion of uses of this tool solely for backup?
In addition, there’s an implication that Nintendo targeted this use, when it’s a quite reasonable possibility that there are bugs in signature handling, or that Nintendo has added anti-cheat code that was triggered.
If Nintendo is intentionally breaking physical game backup, they deserve to be slammed. But this tool is also perilously close to pure piracy, which Nintendo has every right to fight.
In addition, there’s an implication that Nintendo targeted this use, when it’s a quite reasonable possibility that there are bugs in signature handling, or that Nintendo has added anti-cheat code that was triggered.
If Nintendo is intentionally breaking physical game backup, they deserve to be slammed. But this tool is also perilously close to pure piracy, which Nintendo has every right to fight.
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A ten year-old left his Switch case with the original cartridges in a restaurant, never to be seen again?
Not hypothetical...
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Logic has no place in this thread.
MS/Sony has done this before.
My thoughts; if you want to use something like this keep it offline. Hasn't that been the basic thoughts for years with this stuff? The console goes online these companies can/will ban em.
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Sucks for those who can never update their Switch2 forever more, or take the console online now.
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Good news for these users then!
You can hack your console and run piracy tools all you want and rightfully claim that you bought it so you can do that. But you don't own the online services any of these platforms offer. The people complaining that their "backups" got them banned from online can still use their hardware. They just can't use someone else's service.
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Streisand effect in action, never heard about those MIG cartridge (and dumper) but as an owner of a big physical collection of Switch games and a 100% offline player I'm interested.
Regarding the hardware it seems that botch the MIG cart and the dumper are identical (a simple PCB with a cheap FPGA and an even cheaper ESP32, sold to a 2000% markup price) save for the FPGA bitstream. I feel that these two bitstreams could be dumped and reverse enginered and an (opensource or proprietary clone but cheaper) alternative developped from this
Regarding the hardware it seems that botch the MIG cart and the dumper are identical (a simple PCB with a cheap FPGA and an even cheaper ESP32, sold to a 2000% markup price) save for the FPGA bitstream. I feel that these two bitstreams could be dumped and reverse enginered and an (opensource or proprietary clone but cheaper) alternative developped from this
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I'm sure banning people's Switch 2 consoles will get them buying legit software.
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I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this but...
...Are backups supported by the license one agrees to when using the software?
Did Nintendo not say they could and would ban folks, and perhaps much more, for doing stuff like this?
Is there a single use case of this card, or any game backup mechanism for that matter, that does not also enable rampant piracy?
...Are backups supported by the license one agrees to when using the software?
Did Nintendo not say they could and would ban folks, and perhaps much more, for doing stuff like this?
Is there a single use case of this card, or any game backup mechanism for that matter, that does not also enable rampant piracy?
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Yep. I came here to say this. It's consumer-hostile, yet illegal to create a backup if you have to break DRM to do so. I hate it, but that is the law.
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