UPDATE: Regarding the recent 3DS banwave

Slartibartfast42 · May 28, 2017

marbles73 said:
Sure it makes business sense, they don't want people misusing the system to go online and cheat and hack and ruin the experience for others. Not that big a deal. I feel like you're overreacting but I agree with the sentiment of there being a way to return to stock without getting rebanned. Now that they're cracking down there's nothing people can do even if they wanted to stop using CFW.

Cheating online against regular uses is bad for sure. Only a small fraction of cfw want to cheat online. Just ban the cheaters. And give remoresful people a way back in. Most of the cheaters are likely children. They haven't learned better yet.

Dracari · May 28, 2017

thing is if we shift to a injected H&S if theres something still tracking that or they see is outright say we are then people who have high play count on H&S, will become another "Habbit" tracking factor :/

A Plus Ric · May 28, 2017

Slartibartfast42 said:
What's going to happen is many of the banned people will just live with the ban. It will cause them to play Nintendo less. It will allow their Nintendo addiction to die down. This will make them buy less Nintendo in the future. As overall market share goes down, it only causes market share to go down even more. Video games have a positive feedback loop.

Some people may want to get unbanned badly. They are going to end up finding a new seed. A black market for seeds will develop to meet the demand. Unethical people will reap the profits from the black market. The money for the new seed will come out of their video game budget, preventing the sale of a new game. Nintendo should be selling new seeds themselves (almost pure profit), but we know they won't do that.

This is such bad bussiness. Imagine if drug dealers limited how much you could buy from them. People would either decide to stop buying the drugs or go get a new dealer.

An example of the psychology. I was deeply addicted to one of those free mobile for a couple days. I didn't send any money yet, but some people obviously do, and how knows, maybe someday I would have. The company didn't do anything wrong in this example, but it shows the psychology. My game get out of synchronization somehow, maybe bad wifi or something. They wanted me to relaunch the game. It just so happens that at the timing of the game I was at, this caused a major bug. My game was essentially locked. This bug may have been fixable if I asked them for help. I think this bug would have also gone away on its own if I waited 2 and half days. This little hiccup made me realize hard that I should not be playing this game at all. Bye bye game. Moral of the story, disruptions of addictions are bad. Some of these people will realize that they don't need the game after all. The sting goes away. There's a million other games and other forms of entertainment.

As far as cheaters go, I wouldn't even ban them, I'd segregate them. Let the cheaters play against the other cheaters and any users who have opted in. I'd be fun as hell to get a bit buzzed, smoke a bowl, and go cheat at MarioKart online, as long as all the other players were cool with it. It would completely change the game. Cheaters playing against cheaters would need to develop completely different strategies. It shouldn't cost much. You just run two almost identical virtual servers on the same hardware that dynamically allocates resources based on demand. The cheat detect code sets a flag in the database to only send them to the cheat version of the server. You could actually do the same thing with the piracy users. If you let pirated users only play against other pirated users, that will degrade their experience. Those that absolutely can't afford the game will put up with it until they can afford it. People who get fed up of the segregated servers will just buy a legitimate copy. The marginal cost of supporting the pirated users is tiny. This would be more than made up for from the revenue of conversions.

Come on now. I haven't even taken any business classes, how am I smarter than this entire company? They keep thinking "person bad, person must be punished" instead of "person not paying enough, make person pay more".

Hopefully, if Nintendo reads my free advice, they do the honorable thing and offer me some compensation. You too other video game companies.

So what you are saying is Nintendo should spend more money for pirates who don't pay for their games (thus not bringing in money to them or the other Devs) their own servers to play on ? It's already said that less than 5% of 3ds owners use homebrew and less use cfw, and even less cheat....with that in mind......Nintendo should create stuff out of their own pocket for these people, to help keep their company doing well.....(which it wouldnt as you are not paying for games if you're pirating ). Lopsided way of thinking. Businesses would never succeed that way, it would promote pirating, this bringing in even less revenue.

They aren't locking you out from games, which they could because while you own the hardware, they own the software leased to you. So be thankful they let you still play your pirated games.

vinipeix · May 28, 2017

Slartibartfast42 said:
Cheating online against regular uses is bad for sure. Only a small fraction of cfw want to cheat online. Just ban the cheaters. And give remoresful people a way back in. Most of the cheaters are likely children. They haven't learned better yet.

A way to do this would be allow access if the servers don't detect the cfw, kinda like some apps do with rooted mobile devices
I highly doubt this would be possible without a lot of effort though, we don't even know what they can or cannot see

And you know... if they ban a user he/she can always buy another system to play online, thus generating more profit for them...

linuxares · May 28, 2017

RustInPeace said:
Except that the games I'm online with, Pokemon titles, are legit carts, I paid for them, I pre-ordered them. The phone calls I had with Nintendo customer service this week had no bringing up of pirated titles being played. They definitely brought this up in my previous banning in December 2016. It's not just about pirated games, it's "unauthorized software," they probably are finally playing catch-up, hence the big banwave.

I still wonder if it's a 15 days or 30 days tempban if so. I guess we just got to wait and see.

A Plus Ric · May 28, 2017

If it is for CFW or Pirated games it's prob permanent.

Slartibartfast42 · May 28, 2017

Futurdreamz said:
I'm betting that we're barking up the wrong tree in figuring out exactly what software configurations Nintendo is detecting, and assuming that remaining unbanned means you were undetected. They are probably using all methods or at least the more easy ones, and then banning only the subset that spends the most time online.

What percent of their server use is done by pirated users? maybe 1%? Are they paying for the servers on demand, or are they paying for excess capacity? Are the pirated users less than the excess capacity? I don't have the numbers, they do. Anyways, in this case they should just ban the pirated copy of the game from connecting. Force them to buy a new copy. There's no need to take away their ability to play their other games or even use Netflix that they are paying for. They seem to just be looking to punish not to recover costs. Over punishment causes bad will. There's collateral damage here. If a kid gets banned, then everyone they shared that console with is also banned. I'm sure there's many families who can't afford to get multiple 3DSs and people must share. A permanent ban from everything for the whole family because one small kid didn't know any better is an over reaction.

They must also consider the big picture. I don't have the numbers and projections, but I bet they don't have them either, haven't bothered. What is the total cost of not banning versus the total cost of banning? You don't want to cut off your nose to spite your face or throw out the baby with the bathwater, you know what I mean?

angelus kun · May 28, 2017

I found something interesting about spotpass but is in spanish soo please use Google translate http://zonaforo.meristation.com/topic/1622641/

Futurdreamz · May 28, 2017

RustInPeace said:
Except that the games I'm online with, Pokemon titles, are legit carts, I paid for them, I pre-ordered them. The phone calls I had with Nintendo customer service this week had no bringing up of pirated titles being played. They definitely brought this up in my previous banning in December 2016. It's not just about pirated games, it's "unauthorized software," they probably are finally playing catch-up, hence the big banwave.

Yeah, I don't remember your setup and I'm not going to trawl 300 pages to figure out what you did and did not pirate. My theory is that Nintendo sees that you have pirated games on your 3DS, and that you spend a lot of time on their servers. It's possible that they are able to detect that you do pirate, but are unable or are unwilling to make the distinction that you play online using genuine games - for all they know you just found a private seed that they haven't caught yet.

MushGuy · May 28, 2017

skapista said:
All this time, we knew.
LINK

Now that you mention it, I noticed something REALLY strange with my N3DS's activity log: Ever since 3/2/2016, my daily records have been filled with 24 hours of using System Settings, despite playing other games during those times. Could this be a factor of me not getting banned? Then again, this doesn't happen with my O3DS. Perhaps a NTR CFW bug?

Going back to the Pokémon Championships, could it be that the ban that was used to prevent cheating only happened at a certain time and day, resulting in some CFW users being banned and some others not?

TimX24968B · May 28, 2017

100 pages in a day... not reading that... any new ideas/causes found for it?

Michierusama · May 28, 2017

angelus kun said:
I found something interesting about spotpass but is in spanish soo please use Google translate http://zonaforo.meristation.com/topic/1622641/

2010. Spotpass. It talks about how it fetches data to maintain console updated and get latest firmware installed.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

Futurdreamz · May 28, 2017

Slartibartfast42 said:
What percent of their server use is done by pirated users? maybe 1%? Are they paying for the servers on demand, or are they paying for excess capacity? Are the pirated users less than the excess capacity? I don't have the numbers, they do. Anyways, in this case they should just ban the pirated copy of the game from connecting. Force them to buy a new copy. There's no need to take away their ability to play their other games or even use Netflix that they are paying for. They seem to just be looking to punish not to recover costs. Over punishment causes bad will. There's collateral damage here. If a kid gets banned, then everyone they shared that console with is also banned. I'm sure there's many families who can't afford to get multiple 3DSs and people must share. A permanent ban from everything for the whole family because one small kid didn't know any better is an over reaction.

They must also consider the big picture. I don't have the numbers and projections, but I bet they don't have them either, haven't bothered. What is the total cost of not banning versus the total cost of banning? You don't want to cut off your nose to spite your face or throw out the baby with the bathwater, you know what I mean?

How do you know how much of their server use is pirated? It's possible that a small number of users account for 99% of their server use, and a disproportionate amount of them pirated the game. And 1% can still be a large number to an business. If it costs $1,000,000/year to run their servers, then piracy at 1% would eat $10,000/year, something that an accountant would take notice of

ShadowEO · May 28, 2017

I just wanted to remind everyone to stay on topic and discuss the ban. There is no use in making any assumptions or speculation as to how their internal infrastructure works.

(Copy/Paste time)
Items which haven't seemed to be related to this ban wave so far (along with reasons for my thoughts, but just because these are on this list, does not mean they aren't plausible. If you have a valid argument as to why these shouldn't be ruled out, feel free to contribute!):
* SpotPass Settings: Some who have been banned have this off, some who have not have it turned on.
* Firmware Version (Luma, Nintendo): People on all versions have been hit
* Firmware Type (A9LH, B9S): People using A9LH and B9S have been hit as well.
* StreetPass Settings (I doubt this was a thing to begin with since StreetPass uses local Wireless for communications)
* Homebrew Titles such as FBI, HBL, Luma Updater, Themely, and *thatShop* (We now have more users who are saying they have these titles installed who aren't banned, myself included. Update: Unless someone has a valid counter-argument, freeShop is decidedly ruled out, we have too big of a sample with it installed both banned and not to say that it is a cause).
* FE: Echoes, Pokemon SuMo
* Save Modification (Potentially, we've had users report modded save data for games and were not yet banned. May not be a factor, need more samples with modified data to firmly debunk)

Additionally, there is no reason to believe that this ban is temporary. It is true that prior to SuMo, this error code was typically temporary (15 day), but after SuMo, we've seen this error code applied as a perma ban.
(End Copy/Paste)

This is just a list of things that we've thought of as unlikely after looking through data reported by users, this isn't a definitive list of things and certainly isn't any hard facts, but I'm reposting this to ensure that we keep the topic on track and don't circle around to things that have already been discussed over and over with arguments against it.

skapista · May 28, 2017

TimX24968B said:
100 pages in a day... not reading that... any new ideas/causes found for it?

nothing worth

ShadowEO · May 28, 2017

skapista said:
nothing worth

I mean, we have ideas of what doesn't cause it. That's something at least.

Of course, should this be due to multiple bans being queued up, all bets are off.

RedBlueGreen · May 28, 2017

Futurdreamz said:
How do you know how much of their server use is pirated? It's possible that a small number of users account for 99% of their server use, and a disproportionate amount of them pirated the game. And 1% can still be a large number to an business. If it costs $1,000,000/year to run their servers, then piracy at 1% would eat $10,000/year, something that an accountant would take notice of

Depends on what you mean by pirated. If you mean stuff like ticket injection and other things that let you download paid games right from their servers then that's definitely something to be pissed about. If you mean people playing downloaded games that's not really as big a deal. Say 1,000 people are pirating Sun/Moon from the Nintendo CDN servers. the game is 3.2 GB so 3.2 TB is used right there. Playing games though won't cause a loss of sales (if you can even call it that).

Slartibartfast42 · May 28, 2017

A Plus Ric said:
So what you are saying is Nintendo should spend more money for pirates who don't pay for their games (thus not bringing in money to them or the other Devs) their own servers to play on ? It's already said that less than 5% of 3ds owners use homebrew and less use cfw, and even less cheat....with that in mind......Nintendo should create stuff out of their own pocket for these people, to help keep their company doing well.....(which it wouldnt as you are not paying for games if you're pirating ). Lopsided way of thinking. Businesses would never succeed that way, it would promote pirating, this bringing in even less revenue.

They aren't locking you out from games, which they could because while you own the hardware, they own the software leased to you. So be thankful they let you still play your pirated games.

People who pirate games don't pirate all their games. I've pirated a few games to try them out. I don't really play them. The games I most liked I paid for. Pissing off customers is expensive. Without piracy to help me get a better deal, I would seriously consider not being a customer at all. Would they rather have me buy 10 games and pirate 20, or buy zero games?

The marginal cost to support the pirates is very small. Most of the costs are fixed. and what like 98% of the variable costs are due to legitimate use. I said what you do is you give the pirated user a DEGRADED experience, instead of ZERO experience. The amount of revenue generated from people upgrading out of the degraded experience should (I predict, they could try to run models to see if i'm right) exceed the cost of providing such an option.

Piracy can actually increase overall revenue, but that's a separate discussion. The real world is often very counterintuitive. That's why smart people are paid a lot of money to figure things out that are not so obvious. Microsoft is actually a huge benefactor of piracy, but stay on topic.

Look, if people were stealing $200 worth of stuff from your store every month, but a security guard costs $500 a month, would you get the guard? Now, what if they were stealing $600? But, they also caused an increase in revenue of $300 due to stuff like recommendations to other people and purchases while shoplifting? There's a balance between just how hard a store should try to prevent shoplifting. Imagine if Walmart started patting everyone down or demanding to see your receipt everytime you left like CostCo. They'd lose more legitimate customers than they'd save in shoplifting. I may put up with that at Costco, but not Walmart.

Make the pirated version worse. People are more likely to pay to fix a pirated version than to pay for a game they can't play in the first place. CONVERT the pirates, don't punish. Imagine if Nintendo made it so that free copies of Zelda can only have 5 hearts. People would get the game because it was free. Many would get addicted, then they would pay for the game. Only a few would just try to get by on 5 hearts. Only the hardcore players with a lot of skill think that is fun, and those people would buy the game anyways. You can even delay the free version by a month. Why don't they do stuff like this? Are they afraid someone will figure out how to hack it? So what? The lost sales of the few who would bother is less than the extra sales such a system generates, right?

Think BIG PICTURE.

doughmay · May 28, 2017

I have to agree on the first part, the games I have pirated, I play less often than my other ones, probably because i purchased my pokemon games before I new what CFW was XD.

EDIT: ooops kind of off topic! :3

Anyway, if you haven't been banned yet turn off settings as mentioned earlier.

Slartibartfast42 · May 28, 2017

vinipeix said:
A way to do this would be allow access if the servers don't detect the cfw, kinda like some apps do with rooted mobile devices
I highly doubt this would be possible without a lot of effort though, we don't even know what they can or cannot see

And you know... if they ban a user he/she can always buy another system to play online, thus generating more profit for them...

They could just sell new friendseeds for a reasonable amount of money. If they don't clean their systems, they just end up banned again and have to buy another friendseed every time. Look, what is the demand curve in this situation? Is forcing a few people to buy whole new systems more profitable than letting a larger number of people just fix the system they have? I do not think so at all.

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The inadequate, autocratic beast!

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"That guy"

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Huh. Time went by fast.

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