Nintendo’s Anti-Consumer Anti-Piracy Measures Also Reduce The Value Of The Switch 2
from the secondary-markets-are-good dept
When it comes to the anti-piracy efforts taken by some of the more aggressive companies out there, such as Nintendo, the most frustrating part of the whole thing for me is just how completely short-sighted those efforts tend to be. Take Nintendo’s updated EULA for its Switch consoles, for example. The updated agreement makes several changes from its previous iteration, but the most notable is that Nintendo says that if it thinks you’re doing the piracy for any reason, it can suspend all kinds of services on your console, up to and including bricking it completely. And, while the company has yet to go the bricking route so far, it has already begun suspending all online services on consoles for the use of MIG Switches, cards for Switch devices on which you can load legitimately extracted ROMs from purchased games, or pirated versions of the same.
Now, the first layer of how this is short-sighted is easy enough to see. In order to engage in copyright protectionism, Nintendo is risking long-term reputational damage by functionally ruining the consoles of customers for actions that aren’t illegal, or even immoral. Short term protection, longer term risk of everyone thinking you don’t care about your own customers.
But there’s another layer to this, as a result of these service suspensions being tied directly to the device rather than the person. And that is what this protectionism means for the secondary market for Nintendo Switches.
As spotted by Android Authority, a Reddit poster bought themselves a pre-owned Switch 2 from a Walmart store, only to find it had been previously incapacitated by Nintendo.
“I was driving between work sites and stopped at two different Walmarts,” says user Bimmytung. “At the second one I find a Mario Kart edition sitting in the case and couldn’t believe my luck.” They were informed by the Walmart staff that it was an “open box return,” so it was removed from the box to be checked over, and all looked well. The code for the packaged Mario Kart World had been scratched off already, so Walmart knocked another $50 off the price, and it all seemed like a good deal. Until they got home.
Finally after work I get a chance to set it up. Quickly realize I need the super special micro SD card and none of the ~half dozen in the house would work. Drive ten minutes to Target and get one there and pick up a few other accessories as well. Get home and go to finish the setup—quickly get Error Code 2124-4508. A quick Google search shows me I’m screwed. FML.”
Now, there are several layers of shame here to go around. Shame on Walmart for selling a device without ensuring it would work for the buyer the way it is intended to work. And shame on Nintendo for creating an anti-piracy program such that the punishments meted out are linked to hardware rather than the supposed bad-actor it seeks to punish.
But all of that aside, it should also be true that this sort of thing drives the value of a Nintendo Switch console lower than it would be otherwise. Part of the value you gain when you buy a physical thing is the ability to eventually put it on the secondary market at some point. Because of the actions that Nintendo is taking in disabling and/or bricking its own consoles, that injects a great deal of risk into the prospect of buying one on the secondary market. The value of the hardware is, by at least some measure, diminished.
But because Nintendo seems to only think about these things in the short term, the company probably doesn’t much care.
However, the more immediate issue is for those looking to pick up a Switch 2 from a reseller or previous owner, given their current scarcity at first-party sellers. There’s really no way of knowing at all if a console has been bricked when buying the device online, and this could make the resale market a complete shambles for the whole life cycle of the console. And, grimly, that’s not exactly a priority for Nintendo, given that reselling, either in store or online, gains the company nothing, and some would argue actually costs the company a sale—it’s not like it’ll be in a rush to address the problem.
Which is why I won’t be in a rush to buy a Switch 2 anytime soon. And I’m certainly in their target market, having two young children who desperately want one. Instead of the console, however, they will be getting a lesson in making smart buying decisions as a consumer.
Filed Under: bricked, copyright, drm, pre-owned, resale, switch 2, used goods
Companies: nintendo
Comments on “Nintendo’s Anti-Consumer Anti-Piracy Measures Also Reduce The Value Of The Switch 2”
I’ve heard reports that console bricking includes actions like bad words in names.
The more people they screw the better.
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Yep, pirates are a protected class of course, gotta protect those thieves, right?!
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Don’t worry, they haven’t caught up to my characters “Fuqtup” and “Fuqqit” yet!
The cards that don’t actually have games on them but just prompt the console to download them are a pretty terrible idea for the secondary market too.
Not right away. They are resellable, for now. But those games are going to be inaccessible someday when the servers are shut down. Whereas I can go down to the used game store, buy a Wii U disc, and I’ll be able to play it even though the servers are down.
I wouldn’t entirely blame Wal-Mart. That’s a pretty nuanced issue and you’d have to get pretty deep into testing to determine that problem, as described by the article itself.
I’ve worked in electronics retail before, a return is tested to make sure it can power on, charge, and buttons operate. It’s possible they weren’t aware the consoles can be banned. What they could do instead of open-box resell, is any returns are just return-to-vendor (RTV). The place I worked at before (Fry’s) would do that. Some products were always RTV, never repackaged and resold.
Now, perhaps with Game-Stop, I’d expect a more detailed testing. They’re niche enough to be expected to do that.
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I agree, Walmart check is not supposed to go beyond product scratches, missing accessories or not powering on/off.
“Error Code 2124-4508” looks more like a bug than a feature, and all pieces of technology have become so complex that playing with it even few minutes may not reveal any software defect.
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As far as Switch 2 buyers are concerned, it’s both.
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But they don’t accept open-box returns (at least the ones near me), as I found out when I had my wallet out to buy a controller. Since no store had samples out to try, I aborted the purchase. We didn’t talk about whether they’d have accepted a defective product for exchange. While I suspect so, they’re not gonna re-sell those.
They do sell pre-owned gaming products, so be careful. I wouldn’t expect the clerks to connect consoles to online services (wouldn’t they need to have a “store account” to do that?; seems complicated). It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t test the wi-fi or ethernet at all.
If my opinion, if this kills the re-sale market for consoles, maybe that’ll make people think twice about buying defective-by-design products. (Not likely; I see old DVD and Blu-ray players for sale, and who knows whether the newest discs will still be keyed to work on those?)
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DVDs will for sure, especially post-early 2007 ones. It’s Blu-Rays I’ve had problems with and gave up on early on.
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I don’t quite understand what this is trying to say. It would be the earliest DVDs that would be most likely to work, because they’d have included all the keys. Some keys were later revoked, such as the infamously leaked WinDVD key, and no longer appeared on new discs—thus being intentionally incompatible with that player, and probably other old ones.
Did something interesting happen around the year 2007?
(The non-licensed software players have, for decades, just brute-force-cracked the keys—weak due to the “crypto wars” of the 1990s. So none of that shit matters to them, and they’ll just work. Blu-ray has actually-strong cryptography.)
Aren’t companies like Nintendo supposed to ‘maximise shareholder value’ or something? How the hell does this blatant hostility to consumer rights accomplish that?
I think perhaps the Nintendo company needs to take a long, hard look at whoever in their ranks pushed for this potentially-illegal ‘anti-piracy’ approach, and possibly at who’s paying them for it, because I’m starting to wonder if this might be deliberate sabotage.
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The console is a success already, not sure what you’re smoking, or Tim for that matter, this is a big nothing burger.
No one gives a shit about pirates.
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I legitimately purchased the first Switch, legitimately purchased some games for it, and legitimately downloaded an emulator to play my legitimately purchased copies of Minish Cap, Oracle of Ages, and Oracle of Seasons, (because these are unavailable on Switch) and the Game Boy Color versions of Link’s Awakening and Link to the Past (because the remakes are crappy, especially Link Between Worlds). In exactly what way am I a “pirate”, pray tell, Nintendo shill?
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The term “pirate” should never apply to people copying media. But if you’re still giving Nintendo money, that makes you the Nintendo shill.
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Oh good god what a childish thing to say.
BTW, every single console does the same thing, it’s not unique to Nintendo, despite what Tim the click-bait author has implied in this silly piece.
'Now that I have the console time to pick up a few games...'
And, grimly, that’s not exactly a priority for Nintendo, given that reselling, either in store or online, gains the company nothing, and some would argue actually costs the company a sale—it’s not like it’ll be in a rush to address the problem.
Just because the company may not make anything from a secondhand console sale doesn’t mean they won’t be making money from that sale in the form of games bought for it, so while I expect that they’ll continue the practice due to being anti-consumer control-freaks they do have a financial stake in people buying used consoles.
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those additional sales would come at the “cost” of Nintendo having control over whats happening. And, as far as I know, every time Nintendo has faced a profit vs control issue, they haven’t chosen profit.
I’ve no love for walmart. but this is a totally unreasonable expectation. It’s like saying “shame on walmart for accepting a laptop return without checking to make sure every program on the market for it will work” The complexities of what they’d have to test to catch this would mean they couldn’t resell anything, because it wouldn’t scale.
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Explain to everyone here in detail why it’s unreasonable to expect a device you bought should work as intended?
Your example of the laptop is also stupid because if you bought a laptop you’d at least expect it to function at all, right?
I guess you would be happy buying non-functional devices because anything else is apparently unreasonable.
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However from the artilce:
So a) he found he needed a specific type of sd card (I presume the device told him that, though I doubt buy Nintendo malware). However more than that:
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/28046/~/error-codes%3A-2124-4007%2C-2124-4508
The error is when you attempt to access specific features of the device (namely the Nintendo online services). This is not “does the device work at all” its one of it’s many features. Any yes this sucks, but blaming walmart for not investigating every possible feature of the device is absurd.
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You do understand that access to the Nintendo online service is a basic functionality of the device, right? Unless you have access to their service you can’t install any games on it.
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Is it? Does the box promise access to that service? Does Walmart sell the service? I assume the service has always been clear that they may or may not accept your application to join, and they can revoke access later for any reason or no reason; almost all online services have such wording. For now, these banned devices still work with cartridges.
It’s problematic all around, but I don’t know any legal basis for saying that owning a device entitles a person to irrevocable access to an associated service. If the service took money to “sell” some game and then disappeared it, that should be considered (illegal) false advertising on their part, contradictory fine print be damned; but that’s nothing to do with the seller of the device.
I can’t do Google searches from my laptop. Google thinks I’m a robot, I think I’m probably not, and, so, we’re at an impasse. The average buyer probably expects their laptop to be able to do a Google search, but I’m not gonna blame the manufacturer or seller because Google’s turned against me.
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Yes, it’s one of its touted features.
No, why would they? This is a bad argument.
You are still failing to understand how this works, it’s not the account that has been banned from the service – it’s the specific device.
You haven’t read the Switch 2 TOS, have you? You aren’t even allowed to use the device if Nintendo thinks you have violated the TOS, and in this case the device was banned before the current owner bought it. There are 2 problems here, Nintendo’s severe black and white approach and Walmart’s inability to refund or replace the device which they sold in a partly inoperable state.
What if the manufacturer of the laptop was Google and one of it’s touted features is access to their online services for full functionality?
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Who said it was?
It’d be nice for customers if everything were tested thoroughly. Does this plunger really clear the tough clogs? Is this air conditioner’s suggested room size accurate? Is this software bug-free? It would also give Walmart an edge over their competitors, particularly Amazon which is apparently full of garbage products.
But our general expectation is that if I bring a product home from Walmart, and find it’s defective but hasn’t killed or injured anyone, it’s enough that they exchange it for a working one or give a refund. In my experience, they do, and they’re not particularly strict about it. If some product has a very high return rate, they’ll notice, so I suppose these Nintendo products are mostly acting as the buyers expect.
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The OP:
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That comment didn’t say what you’ve interpreted it to say. It addressed Walmart’s legal responsibilities, not consumer expectations.
It’s reasonable for people to expect that they’ll be able to buy a Nintendo console at Walmart and connect it to Nintendo’s service; and that Walmart will refund their money if that doesn’t work.
It’s not reasonable to expect that Walmart should “feel shame” for selling products with serial numbers, because manufacturers could refuse to fully service certain serial numbers. It’s on the public to rise up against that, as they did with the Pentium 3—or not, in which case, why shouldn’t Walmart sell the products they’re clamoring for? (Especially given that Walmart claim the same right to refuse service to anyone.)
Perhaps some people like the idea of maybe getting surprise-fucked by Nintendo. Masochism isn’t my thing, but it’s not my place to kink-shame others for it.
Nintendo is risking long-term reputational damage
I’m not sure Nintendo cares about reputational damage. They have shown a consistent disdain for their fans over the years. Their 1st concern is control over their IP. There have been plenty of stories over the years where Nintendo gets bad press over draconian IP enforcement where people would wonder “why would they do that, its free advertisement” or “that makes the company look bad”. It doesn’t seem to matter as people continue to but their stuff.
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Good god what a stupid take.
Such support for pirates on this site, and all while ignoring every single vendor does the same thing, even Steam.
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You don’t really know anything, do you? You think this is about piracy when it’s about anti-consumer practices.
Nintendo is kind of famous for shitting on their fans but for some reasons most fans are too ignorant to realize this but it is slowly changing every time Nintendo sues a fan or DMCA’s content like game reviews and commentaries.
So why don’t you take your ignorant stupidity and fuck off like a good little Nintendo-monkey.
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Waaaaah, waaaaah, waaaaah, I can’t pirate, waaaaaaah.
JFC, get over yourself, Tim.
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Tim obviously loves pirates and pirating, and those click-bait articles.
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Oh good god, turning an anecdote into a rule is akin to making a mountain out of a mole hill.
You’re really trying to make this into something big, what journalistic crap.
BTW, I’m still buying one, and the Ars forum is filled with people saying the same thing, a few trolls, children and pirates may not buy them, but most never would have anyway.
Not a scandal, just an indictment of the internet as it plays today.
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Make sure to call yourself “Nintendo Twink” on the Switch 2 to get the opportunity to buy more devices.
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Oh how clever, did you sit up all night thinking that one up?
[Rolls eyes]
What a fucking child you are.
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Those who live in willful ignorance are offended by reality.
Switch 2 permabans are so permanent that not even Nintendo itself can overturn them, as one user named ‘Twink Link’ discovered to their horror
So no, I didn’t have to stay up all night, all I had to do was referencing factual reality.
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Factual reality, what a child you are.
Keep protecting those pirates, and fall for those click-bait articles.
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A child in the derogatory sense is someone who usually can’t make a valid argument and instead just goes “No, you are it!”
Do you have anything intelligent to add or are you going to continue with the pre-teen tantrums?
And that’s why I’m sticking with my Steam Deck!
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Not only does it seem pretty good in terms of freedom and technical quality, it has a fair number of clones that seem equally good (roughly). I’m no fan of Steam, it being a glorified DRM system that can disappear one’s “purchased” games just as Nintendo can, and I’m not aware of any way to get the Steam Deck without a Steam account. But maybe someday I’ll get a used one, or just go into Best Buy and grab one of the similar products.
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Steam does the same thing, dipshits, as do all the others, this should have been revealed, but click-bait articles aren’t about proper journalism.