I thought this was interesting, coming off the heels of the EmuParadise news. Nintendo really is trying to crack down on piracy, though once again, it seems too little too late.
Basically, up until yesterday, it was possible to download any game, regardless of region, straight from Nintendo's eShop servers – so long as you had the proper credentials. Nintendo, however, never generated unique credentials for each user, so the servers had no way of knowing whether an incoming set of requests were coming from a legitimate customer. As long as you could find the right credentials online, downloading a game was just a matter of putting the info into a homebrew application and pressing the download button.
All that's changed now, following the most recent update, 11.8. Nintendo now generates unique credentials for each game and user, rendering useless the download applications and some long-running sites that were just databases of credentials. This doesn't stop people from just downloading games from elsewhere, but it does plug up a gaping hole in Nintendo's infrastructure.
I never used any of this stuff, but when I found out about it, I was baffled that this was something that Nintendo just allowed you to do. I'm pretty sure they made this impossible from Switch on day one, but that doesn't change that for years, people were downloading free games – even brand new ones – straight from the source.
The page linked to in the screenshot.
The ResetEra thread on version 11.8, which already had some people discussing the possibility of changes.
If I've gotten any information wrong, just let me know, and I'll fix it.
Basically, up until yesterday, it was possible to download any game, regardless of region, straight from Nintendo's eShop servers – so long as you had the proper credentials. Nintendo, however, never generated unique credentials for each user, so the servers had no way of knowing whether an incoming set of requests were coming from a legitimate customer. As long as you could find the right credentials online, downloading a game was just a matter of putting the info into a homebrew application and pressing the download button.
All that's changed now, following the most recent update, 11.8. Nintendo now generates unique credentials for each game and user, rendering useless the download applications and some long-running sites that were just databases of credentials. This doesn't stop people from just downloading games from elsewhere, but it does plug up a gaping hole in Nintendo's infrastructure.
I never used any of this stuff, but when I found out about it, I was baffled that this was something that Nintendo just allowed you to do. I'm pretty sure they made this impossible from Switch on day one, but that doesn't change that for years, people were downloading free games – even brand new ones – straight from the source.
The page linked to in the screenshot.
The ResetEra thread on version 11.8, which already had some people discussing the possibility of changes.
If I've gotten any information wrong, just let me know, and I'll fix it.