 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. Sorry we haven't had a lot of news videos the last couple of days, it's been a bit of a crazy week. Just a lot of kid activities here as we wind down to the end of the school year, but we're getting a little bit back on track cause I got some breaking news. Well, not really breaking news, but important news for you today that we're going to discuss. But before we get to that, I wanna remind you we are giving away two copies of Mario Striker's Battle League to kick off Prime Gaming Fest. All you have to do is go down to the pinned comment or down in the description, click on the link. And I wish everyone luck, we'll be announcing the winners at the start of Prime Gaming Fest at June 9th at 10 or 9 a.m. 9 a.m. CTN June 9th. Hope to see all you guys there for Prime Gaming Fest. And let's get into what we have to talk about in regards to this because this news is one that Nintendo's been doing for a while, but it's really interesting what they're trying to do and that is Nintendo trying to stop cheaters. There have been a lot of cheating that has happened across their software. Mario Kart cheaters, Smash Bros. cheaters and really the one that happens, I think more frequently than most, Splatoon 2. And it's sort of important to do something about cheating when you have Splatoon 3 coming out. And a lot of the ways that various companies deal with cheating end up being a little bit hurtful towards normal consumers. So let's just dive into what Nintendo is doing here by checking out this article on Nintendo Life. So it says Nintendo files a patent to combat online cheating and software modification. So it says Nintendo is always filing patents for all sorts of ideas, but they don't always see the light of day. This latest one might be a bit different though. This new one will target cheaters by attempting to identify any software modifications. This would be achieved by implementing an attestation program that continues to check for possible code changes to the software. The technology described implements attestation programs that employ code reuse techniques. In particular, the technology relates to auto-generating attestation programs for among other aspects, detecting whether a program has been modified. In one non-limiting example, the technology uses a tool that scans a software program, example a video game, code for usable code sequences. The tool can automatically combine code sequences to generate a large number of attestation programs of different varieties, example memory checks and hashing. The same pattern further notes how attestation tools are particularly handy for online multiplayer and competitive play over the internet and mentions how unfair advantages result in games may be less satisfying for all users. These modifications can also come with certain security risks. Such cheating is prevalent where the gaming environment is extended to gaming, particularly multiplayer gaming over the internet. In particular, users are able to modify software in a way that enables them to have advantages over other players on different systems across a multiplayer game. These unfair advantages result in the game being much less satisfying to the user, thereby affecting the overall human user experience and interaction in the game. Moreover, such modifications to the game can create certain security risks for the game system. So yeah, they're probably not gonna officially announce this as they note here. It'll just be something that just simply exists. And it's probably trying to get out there before Splatoon 3 hits to deal with the wide swath of cheating that's been going on in Splatoon 2. So this is clearly a very positive thing for Nintendo to explore. And what's notable here is that since this is a software-based anti-cheat, it actually shouldn't impact people dumping their games to PC to emulate. It really shouldn't affect that at all. It also shouldn't affect whether or not people modified their Nintendo Switch hardware and say, wanna run custom firmware or other things like that or wanna add other modifications to their hardware. So maybe some of them, what's the water cool their Switch for some reason? It shouldn't really impact any of that. So that's really cool. They're not really checking for hardware modifications. This is focusing on software because software is the most prevalent type of cheating out there. In fact, it's pretty hard to catch someone cheating with hardware because you have to figure out exactly what the hell they're doing. So yeah, I do think the software cheating is the most easy one to catch because it does involve obviously tampering with code in some way and being able to have some sort of system in place to catch that tampering. And thus, take care of those players, boot them out, permaband, whatever they gotta do is definitely beneficial for the consumer. This doesn't mean it can't affect hardware, of course, because naturally, if you catch someone cheating, Nintendo could decide, hey, we're just gonna brick your Switch and that's gonna be that. Nintendo has done the Switch Switches, DSs and other systems in the past. So this isn't beyond Nintendo scope. And if you are breaking terms of service on the game, which also happens to break the terms of service to the platform, Nintendo does maintain the rights to basically prevent you from using your Switch anymore. So it's well within Nintendo's rights whether you like it or not. So this is good. This is a positive because nobody likes to play online matches but cheating. And that has been one of the somewhat underbelly conversation leading up to the launch of Splatoon 3 was how Nintendo was gonna deal with cheating since it was so prevalent. Like when you went to the upper ranks of Splatoon 2, let's just say it was pretty common sometimes as much as every other match to run into people who were clearly cheating in some way. And that sucks because when you're at that highest level of competition, you would like to just play against other people who are also highly skilled in not taking advantage of things that you aren't privy to unless you also cheat. And while they did catch a number of these cheaters, there was always more and it wasn't always the best. So Nintendo having a new anti-cheat program in place. One that's more software based especially for online multiplayer games. I think it makes a lot of sense. I also like how this isn't really a DRM style anti-cheat. Like we have seen a lot of DRM version anti-cheats in the past from a lot of other companies that ultimately we're trying to solve multiple things. They're trying to solve cheating and also trying to solve pirating all in one. And frankly, it ended up just creating a mess of a system for end users, legitimate consumers that bought the game and aren't cheating or having some difficulties just trying to play the game due to that DRM. So Nintendo didn't go that route, thankfully. So that's really good. And obviously the games between three do have a single player mode. So you definitely don't wanna be like, oh, you must connect online to play, blah, blah, blah. That's just, we need to do an online check and then our servers will check the code base. No, why can't you just build it into the system, build it into the software and let the software self-check and hey, guess what? When you connect online, if the code base that exists to check the software is somehow deleted, because I could see someone hacking in, wanting to maybe say, hey, what if I just delete the checker? Well, if that code's missing, they could just say, oh, you're clearly cheating because you modified the code just to get rid of the code checker in the first place. So that's the beauty of playing online is that they can still check the code as you connect. So I think that they're in a very good place here to stop cheating, moving forward. This isn't gonna be full proof, by the way. We all know that no matter what anti-cheat systems are put in place, cheaters find a way around it, right? People who are hacking the games find a way around these anti-cheat systems. So it's really just a matter of time before somebody finds a way around this system. But still, if it can greatly reduce the number of cheaters, especially at launch for Splatoon 3 and maybe moving forward, I'm all for it because I think obviously an anti-cheat built around checking code changes is maybe one of the more clever ideas. In fact, I'm kind of surprised Nintendo's the one that come up with this system and it hasn't meant other major multiplayer games, like Call of Duty or something, doing something like this. It's Nintendo that came up with the concept. So kind of neat. You guys don't know what you think about this down in the comments below. I am Nathaniel Ruppeljantz from Nintendo Prime. I hope you really enjoyed this video. We'll be back to our normal Prime news episodes on Monday as we get back into a bit of a normal schedule here on an attempt to get back into a normal schedule, getting busy weekend ahead, been a busy week. It's gonna be a busy month. So catch you guys in that next video.