 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. We have a very interesting story today because Nintendo recently had a patent approved, a sort of thing to combat against modifications of Switch games and potentially Switch systems. That's right, Nintendo seems to be fighting back against people who are modifying game files and modifying Nintendo Switch systems. Now, obviously we all know the primary reason to modify a Switch system, at least in my mind, if we want to just keep this completely 1,000% legal to make backups of your games. You could also obviously load Android on if you want, watch Netflix, create custom themes and a whole bunch of stuff. There's a lot of things that you can legally do and there's nothing really wrong with that, of course. Are you sure about that? People modify their Switches so they can pirate Switch games but that's obviously covered through a different scope. Maybe that's why Nintendo actually created this but Nintendo obviously is also worried about people who modify game files. Specifically when they're playing them on Switch because it can give them advantages in games like Splatoon 2 and stuff like that. Well, we've seen a lot of cheating happen in the past and Nintendo tries really hard to combat it. Well, they've created a new system to combat this that I don't know what it's gonna be implemented but it was approved by the patent, the US patent companies on March 8th. So, quite recently, so we're gonna talk about that here and I wanna give a big shout out to Nintendo Academy for originally discovering this because I was unaware of it until he made a video on it. I'll put a link down to his video as the source down in the description as well as a link to the actual patent. Now, all of that being said, thank you so much for being here. If this is the first time you've ever seen a Nintendo Prime video, I would appreciate a like and hey, why not subscribe to the channel? In fact, I appreciate my subscribers so much. We're actually giving away a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X or a Switch OLED to one lucky subscriber this month. All you have to do is head to the Glean.io link down in the description or the pinned comment to enter and yeah, you gotta be subscribed or you can't win. So, cool, right? Pretty simple. Let's get into the actual news now. Now, here's the patent and as always with a lot of these patents, there's a lot of legal mumbo jumbo. I could literally go line by line reading literally everything. In fact, let me read you a portion of this because the portion I'm about to read you is very interesting. So, this portion is at the very top and it says the systems and method for identifying modified program data. This says 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 for code usable for code sequences. The tool can automatically combine the code sequences to generate a large number of attestation programs of different variety, memory checks, hashing, et cetera. So, they'll eventually be able to check all of the hardware as well while the software is running. Now, the purpose of this obviously is to eliminate cheating, to eliminate a lot of things. There's a huge technical overview of this that gets honestly a little bit above my understanding on how this works. Some stuff is actually held back due to copyright. They really don't want how exactly it works to be out there so hackers can work around it. But they'll say video game systems have enabled players to participate in various different gaming environments for decades. Games are designed in a manner so that players are presented with a finite set of parameters, boundaries, and rules in which to play the game. For example, a video game may allow a player to level up to a certain amount or the player may be restricted from certain movement in the game environment, walking through walls. Certain players may modify the game program and or game metadata in a manner that was not intended by the original designers of the game. For example, the player may modify the software so that the game character can level up faster or walk through walls in the game. Thus, certain drawbacks exist when designing a video game environment in a manner that reduces or restricts modifications in this manner. So they're trying to get rid of people basically hacking the games and doing whatever the hell they want with it. Now, they mentioned throughout this entire document something that I find to be very engaging and very interesting is while they are just doing this in regards to the video game, they are actually using the video games to do hardware checks. And this is what I find really interesting because a lot of times when you're talking about modifying and hacking a Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch game, you're dealing with software files that obviously hit the hardware in different ways. And through these software checks, they're gonna be able to tell if you've also modified your hardware. So if you're running a custom operating system but you're running a Nintendo game, they're going to actually be able to tell that you are doing that. Now, it does note in there that Nintendo has certain things in place to check on this and to keep people in check, but they don't mention specifically what damages they're going to do. Now, Nintendo does note in their licensing agreement, so they have the right to revoke obviously your play license. So if you're cheating in Splatoon 3 this summer, they have the right to just revoke your ability to play that game on that Switch or just that license in general for that game is completely blocked. They have the right to obviously brick your systems. If they discovered you have modified the system in an illegal way, hello, you're playing pirated games, Nintendo discovers you, boom, they're gonna nuke your system. We've already seen them do this in the past with 3DS units, Wii U units. This isn't new, Nintendo's been able to do this. They just never really had a proper public system in place for doing it. And now they have patented this new way that they're gonna use their game software to check on the system software and the system hardware and the system software basically doing a blanketed check to tell, hey, are people cheating? Have they modified something? Is there a erroneous code running that isn't from our original development team? And because of that, they're gonna be able to shut down those copies of games quicker and shut down hardware that is featuring a hacked Switch even faster. So I don't know that people hacking their switches need to worry as much. A lot of you guys, obviously for starters, don't connect your system to Nintendo's official online services, so by avoiding doing that, you avoid a lot of the checks that Nintendo can do. But now they're gonna be implementing this inside software. So when Splatoon 3 comes out, it's already going to have this technology included with the game. Same with Nintendo Switch Sports. Same with, say, Breath of the Wild 2 later this year. They're going to have this system check in there. It might even be part of a future system update as well, but they're basically implementing this blanket across all their future releases to just really make the gaming experience better. So in many ways, this is like Nintendo's anti-cheat system, right? That's what this primarily is. I don't know that it's gonna affect people modifying their hardware as much as it's gonna help affect people who are cheating the system. And these cheats more often than not exist in multiplayer games. Again, we've seen it in Splatoon 2. We've seen it in Smash Bros. and Mario Kart even. We see cheaters in all of these games. And this is basically Nintendo's way to say, hey, we know that cheating makes the game worse for others. We're not gonna allow that. We're gonna put better systems in place. We'll be forward to prevent it. So ultimately, this is actually a really good thing, even if there might be some fringe hardware switches that get shut down for being hacked and modified. I do think that Nintendo's gonna exercise that power whenever they can because that's what Nintendo likes to do, plus it might force those people to buy more switches. And then that's just, you know, that's a whole nother extra money in Nintendo's pocket, which Nintendo cares about more than anything. So yeah, I do think that this is actually a really positive thing. It's gonna be a great anti-cheat system. We're not gonna get to the nitty gritty details on how it works besides the fact that it's checking the code base within the game while you're playing it. So that's, you know, how it works. Again, hackers might find a way around this. People who wanna cheat might find a way around this. They usually do. It's always a constant back and forth between anti-cheat and modification changes versus, you know, the hackers finding new methods and new ways to get around and do algorithms. So again, this isn't going to prevent people from modifying switches or prevent them from cheating in games. It's just going to make it harder to get away with. And that, to me, is good. That's gonna ensure a much smoother experience in games like Splatoon 3, you know, maybe even Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the future with an update. Maybe it's gonna help out, you know, if we get an arms two at some point, other multiplayer games that might be coming down the pipeline. If Sparks of Hope has an online multiplayer mode, it will help with that. If Breath of Wild 2 has any sort of online functionality, again, help with that. I'm really, really excited for what this could mean. And I'm just glad that Nintendo's taken it seriously because for a long time it kind of felt like Nintendo was aware of the cheaters but they're not really gonna do anything about it. And now, hey, they were. It just takes time to develop a system like this. So now, we've got folders. Now we've got, you know, a new anti-cheat program in place. We have brand new online infrastructure coming from the database sector. So Nintendo's actually listening, I think. This is what's weird. They added folders out of nowhere. They've got new online servers for multiplayer games moving forward out of nowhere. They're using AMD FSR Super Resolution from AMD, obviously in the upcoming Nintendo Switch Sports. Hello, listening to people complaining about performance and resolution. Hey, let's use existing technology to make our games better. Wow, Nintendo listening there. Like, this is crazy to me. I didn't think Nintendo was going to listen this much. And we'll see what this turns out for Nintendo's next platform. But so far, I gotta say huge credit to Nintendo and Shintaro Furukawa. Remember, when he took over, he was not the CEO at the very beginning of the Nintendo Switch era. He actually took over a couple of years into that era. And now we're about three years out with him being CEO and we're seeing how Nintendo's reacting to feedback. They're actually listening. That really makes me excited. So thank you, Nintendo, for listening. And I hope this ends up applying to your next platform as well. And we see a number of improvements on that platform that fans have been calling for. And we're gonna be looking towards that Nintendo Switch online service and improvements, obviously, with their game delivery there. And just voice chat and a whole bunch of other stuff we hope to see. Maybe themes. People have been begging for themes. Maybe expect that on the next platform. I guess we'll see how much Nintendo's been listening when that platform gets announced, which we're probably still two, three years away from that anyways. Now, that being said, I wanna thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathaniel Rumpeljans from Nintendo Prime. And as always, I hope that you guys are smiling, having a good evening, and I'll see you tonight on our live stream. Bye, everybody.