It would essentially kill off all hobbyist development. Indie gaming as we know it would not exist, the vast majority of all professional programmers would not exist (even those who aren't part of the gaming industry). People like me who learnt to program growing up so I could learn to make games. "Yeah, you need an enterprise fee for that, too bad kiddo".
Whew.
"Free" is a complicated topic with open source software. (of course this game isn't free or open source lol)
Freedom in terms increasing what you can do with the hardware you own is not the same as something being "free" to download. Although in the case of this game, it's not really anything.
He's opened the door to getting blacklisted by Nintendo and the other console platforms in addition to potentially having action brought against him by Circle.
It's not the same thing at all if those were vetted by the platform holder, which they probably were. I'm well aware that he can't do anything to damage the Switch with an interpreter alone. But who's to say he can't add code via patches that could then be run without the user's approval?
In this case, the dev snuck coding tools (not an old game ROM) into his game without informing his publisher. Certification and publishing requires the game follow specific standards and rules, which the dev flaunted brazenly. Now the publisher is busy with a mess they never asked for or expected because of a lone wolf thinking he could stick it to The Man with an Easter egg made redundant by elementary coding tools readily accessible elsewhere.
As far as everyone else knew, it wasn't. The publisher didn't know either. If he had it certified then none of this would matter for conversation.
What are the hypothetical consequences of that? File system corruption?
If it's a fully functional Ruby interpreter, then you could do literally anything the game is allowed to do (and probably a few things it isn't if you can find some OS bugs). Exactly how bad this can get depends on how many foot-guns the Switch OS leaves lying around.
I wonder if part of the discussions Circle is having with Nintendo is over the logistics of nuking the CDN and refunding.
Just to point out: Rajan is not the developer of the original browser game. That was Michael Townsend. Rajan ported / enhanced the game for iOS (and now Switch).
