Nintendo warns "unauthorised use" could result in the company bricking consoles
Nintendo recently updated its Nintendo Account Agreement to state that it reserves the right to brick consoles in an effort to combat piracy and hacking.
The details:
As spotted by Game File, Nintendo's updated Account Agreement policy contains over 100 changes, including new wording in the Licence for Digital Products section, with account holders being notified of the changes via email. The UK version of the policy now states that "unauthorised use of a Digital Product may result in the Digital Product becoming unusable" and that users should not "sublicense, publish, copy, modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble any portion of Digital Products."
Meanwhile, the US agreement is more extreme, stating that Nintendo "may render the Nintendo Account Services and/or the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part" if players do not follow its policy. The agreement also clarifies that users are not permitted to "publish, copy, modify, reverse engineer, lease, rent, decompile, disassemble, distribute, offer for sale, or create derivative works" involving Nintendo Account Services, or to find ways to crack and circumvent its security features.
As reported by Eurogamer, the company has also updated its Privacy Policy to cover the Switch 2's Game Chat feature, which records recent voice and video chats for a set period of time provided you give permission. This will allow Nintendo to review the last three minutes of a chat if necessary, in the event that players "encounter any language or behaviour that may violate applicable laws." The company can then pull information from the chat session, such as location, date, and time, and pass it on to relevant authorities in order to maintain a "safe and family-friendly online environment."
Last month, a Japanese man was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine after being found guilty of violating the country's trademark laws by modding and selling Switch consoles preloaded with pirated games. However, this is not the first time Switch hackers have received criminal sentences. US-based modder Gary Bowser was sentenced to 40 months in prison and forced to pay Nintendo a portion of his earnings for the rest of his life.
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