Inside the Messy World of Nintendo Switch Hacking

CYBER

VICE

Tech News, News & Politics, Technology, News

4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2018

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pirates recently dumped Super Smash Bros. Ultimate around two weeks before it was scheduled to hit stores. Motherboard senior staff writer Joseph Cox takes us inside the messy world of Nintendo Switch hacking and piracy. The Switch piracy community—much of which operates on the gamer-focused chat app Discord—is full of ingenuity, technical breakthroughs, and evolving cat-and-mouse games between the multi-billion dollar Nintendo and the passionate hackers who love the company but nonetheless illegally steal its games. Pirates deploy malware to steal each other’s files so they can download more games themselves. Groups deliberately plant code into others' Switches so they no longer work. And some people in the scene have been doxed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Tann, it's got the code it's going to launch.
0:11.0	It's a unit system.
0:13.0	I know this.
0:15.0	It's all the files of the whole park.
0:17.0	It tells her everything.
0:19.0	Sir, he's uploading the virus.
0:21.8	Eagle won.
0:22.6	The package is being delivered.
0:28.6	I'm Ben Maku, National Security Reporter with Vice, and this is Cyber, a podcast from
0:33.9	Motherboard about hacking.
0:36.0	Yet again, a major Nintendo release has been leaked.
0:40.0	People are copying it.
0:41.0	The ROM is out there.
0:42.2	It's all over the place.
0:43.7	How did this happen?
0:44.9	I mean, did this just jump off of a truck somewhere?
0:47.9	Or is this some sort of fakery going on here?
0:51.4	It's almost Christmas, which means Nintendo fans are anxiously awaiting the December 7th
0:55.9	release of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, the company's biggest game in years.
1:01.0	But earlier this week, the gaming world got some unexpected news.
1:04.7	Pirates had leaked full copies of the game online weeks before anyone was supposed to get
1:09.5	their hands on it.
	...

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