Hacking Is the GW card just an expensive DRM dongle?

[InsaneNutter]

I hope someone just butt-fucks gateway by hacking their launcher.dat and making it boot into "gateway" mode but with devmenu already installed. Then we can watch as they fall and die out.

Without Gateways efforts the community wouldn't stand where it is now, as others have said you need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and indeed consider the future too.

I'm not saying Gateway are perfect, however they have done a significant amount for the scene and seem to get a lot of hate for helping things progress.

 

[Arkansaw]

yeah..but the last big thing they achieved was sysnand downgrade (probably after they sold their 4.x stock but heh)

 

[sarkwalvein]

Without Gateways efforts the community wouldn't stand where it is now, as others have said you need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and indeed consider the future too.

I'm not saying Gateway are perfect, however they have done a significant amount for the scene and seem to get a lot of hate for helping things progress.

How is it wronger to pirate the efforts that someone else did to sell you technology to pirate the works of others, than to pirate the works of others in the first place?

 

[Deleted User]

How is it wronger to pirate the efforts that someone else did to sell you technology to pirate the works of others, than to pirate the works of others in the first place?

WHAT? Gateway is a way to play Homebrew .3ds. Not for piracy!! How could you even suggest such a thing!!

 

[sarkwalvein]

WHAT? Gateway is a way to play Homebrew .3ds. Not for piracy!! How could you even suggest such a thing!!

LOL, ok... Yes, they added homework support in some later not initial release of their FW, because that was their true objective, to enable homebrew

 

[zoogie]

This "expensive DRM dongle" argument could also easily apply to 3DS cartridges...

Long story short, if you expect people to do good work (like making awesome games and hax), they eventually need to be payed.

 

[InsaneNutter]

How is it wronger to pirate the efforts that someone else did to sell you technology to pirate the works of others, than to pirate the works of others in the first place?

I'm not saying it right or wrong, all im saying is Gateway have given you the all in one package as it was. Regardless of who stole what from who Gateway have done a lot of their own original work too. People wouldn't buy the flash card if it was possible to do all you can without a Gateway. It's up to the end user if they feel its worth buying one.

 

[migles]

? basically everyone realize that gw is a card to provide piracy - it's the main reason most of us have bought it.

edited because what i was trying to say was not that xD

 

[xBleedingSoulx]

Without Gateway there wouldn't even be 3DS scene, I remember these boards before Gateway and they were just full of hype for fake flashcarts and noobs asking how to play roms.

 

[HEX1GON]

This "expensive DRM dongle" argument could also easily apply to 3DS cartridges...

Long story short, if you expect people to do good work (like making awesome games and hax), they eventually need to be payed.

Many just hax systems and games for fun. That's what gaming scenes were 10ish years ago.

GW is a product, just like a modchip some systems don't require them. I believe it's just opened the door to more basic hackers compared to the elite with oliscopes and other expensive equipment.

CFW has already made it's way to the 3DS, some time and some day it will become reality. Just as many thought 4.5+ systems wouldn't be GW compatible..

 

[Ericss]

It's not like it's just for shows; the GW cart provides a mSD slot for ROMs, which can be used on multiple systems. If you put ROMs in the 3DS SD and used multiple systems, you would have to put them in each 3DS' SD. Instead, all you have to do is swap the GW cart.

 

[Margen67]

someone finally fired the shots!


how did people didn't realized that gateway card is just a way to get money from piracy. If people really tried, we already had ways to use hacks in much cheaper or even free ways..

come on.. the first exploit was abusing the DS profile, that could be done with a normal DS card.

later we get game save exploits, that are just like the ones we had on psp.. there was a time people where selling pandora batteries, but you could create your own...


gateway is only getting away because its the only thing we have...


Margen67

like this?

Guys the argument of being able to "backup your carts" honestly died last generation. If you want all your games stored on your SD card then buy them from the eshop. I don't care if some obscure games aren't available to purchase in that format or if you already own a billion carts. Game "backups" are just flat out something that we're just not interested in supporting and we are certainly not going to go out of our way to develop some crazy method of trying to "authenticate" that you actually purchased the cart. Why you may ask? Because we don't care enough about that feature for our own personal use to develop it. At the end of the day this project is about developing things we want to use. Why you may ask? Because nobody is paying us to develop things we could care less about. There is also not ETA for release. Why you may ask? Because we do this in our free time and nobody is paying us to develop these features outside of our own pace. There is also no guaranteed feature set or release. Why you may ask? Because nobody is entitled to anything we develop and choose not to release.


At the end of the day this project really boils down to three things that we think people should be able to do.

Arm11 kernel access for RAM editing and debugging (already done)
A region free solution for n3ds (being worked on).
Possibly some sort of signed homebrew channel from home menu with access to services such as CSDN (for sound on n3ds)?

Also, I am sick and tired of hearing these piracy "debates":

It's not a moral issue it's an ethical and most important an legal issue.
Taking away revenue from developers is wrong. We have to eat too you know. If you don't like what we make, then don't play our games.
Trying to rationalize piracy by saying "oh it only hurts the big evil game corporations" is a crock of shit and just goes how little you know about business and economics.
Telling developers that they are hypocrites for not enabling piracy but personally downloading a movie, game etc. every once in awhile just goes to show how ignorant you are. Pirating for personal use and enabling piracy for millions is a completely different situation.

It's not a moral issue it's an ethical and most important an legal issue.

Which is why you used devmenu.

I don't know why you can claim anti-piracy even though Relys is using devmenu.

Telling developers that they are hypocrites for not enabling piracy but personally downloading a movie, game etc. every once in awhile just goes to show how ignorant you are. Pirating for personal use and enabling piracy for millions is a completely different situation.

Doing something less doesn't mean you're not a hypocrite.

If you want all your games stored on your SD card then buy them from the eshop. I don't care if some obscure games aren't available to purchase in that format or if you already own a billion carts.

I guess I should just rebuy all my games then.

could care less about

couldn't*


Also

Now I'm sorry but I'm calling you out on this. There's a difference between simply not developing something and actively blocking it. This project was great when it was a fully open source project, the goal wasn't piracy but if people ended up using it to develop piracy well, that's their legal issue to worry about not yours. Don't try to stand on the moral high ground here. At the end of the day you're doing exacly the same thing as the gateway team, hacking a system to run unauthorized code. The only difference is they decided to actually get paid for doing it.




Well then since you're personally called out my argument here I feel inclined to answer these so called "points"


1. It's not a legal issue at all, for the same reason that emulators get by fine. As long as you are not specifically enabling piracy you are fine. In this case not only are you not enabling piracy your putting in artificial AP checks. So yes its a moral issue.

2. I use piracy to try before you buy. Too many games now are $5 games sold at huge markups because companies know that once you buy it you can't return it.

3. No one has used that argument. The argument being used is that studies have shown the impact of piracy on the industry as a whole is minimal and that companies use industry-funded scare tactics to make it seem worse than it is.

4. I'm saying you're hypocrites for enabling EMULATORS while decrying the emulation of current gen games. Both are piracy yet one is considered "morally" right because "oh hey it's old".

5. No one's insulted the developers (well a minority have), the only people throwing around insults on a regular basis are the people defending the project. Most of us have been very civil when debating the issue. (we can add yourself to that list by the way, hypocrisy strikes again!)

 

[SirByte]

I don't think there would be anything bad to see a 'hacked' GW launcher, not to circumvent the red card but in the sense that (a) all the obfuscation etc. -and brick code- be removed so it is smaller and loads faster and (b) has options to e.g. to use a text-based menu / have sorting options (date/name/filename) / press a button and see title details / use your own loading screen / skinning options / etc. or even "borrow" some code/offsets from rxtools to get EmuNAND 9.6 and 9.7 working on O3DS.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

It's not like it's just for shows; the GW cart provides a mSD slot for ROMs, which can be used on multiple systems. If you put ROMs in the 3DS SD and used multiple systems, you would have to put them in each 3DS' SD. Instead, all you have to do is swap the GW cart.

You know the 3DS SD card is removable right?
I would actually prefer it this way, then I could have the launcher and all the games and saves on a single SD card and I'd only need that to play games on another 3DS, no need to download the launcher again or bring both the sd card and the gw.

 

[Ericss]

You know the 3DS SD card is removable right?
I would actually prefer it this way, then I could have the launcher and all the games and saves on a single SD card and I'd only need that to play games on another 3DS, no need to download the launcher again or bring both the sd card and the gw.

EmuNAND isn't portable

 

[DSpider]

At 5:01 - "And now we have to insert their DRM dongle..." Hahaha. That was very tongue-in-cheek of him.

But seriously. I don't understand how we've had kernel access for MONTHS now with Cubic Ninja and Zelda Ocarina of Time, and there isn't a single CFW release that allows emuNAND and CIA install support. Wtf? And no, I'm not asking "can I has romz loader pls" - being able to run backups is the very soul of a CFW. The fact that the "NTR" cfw can run region-free cartridges makes that a system patch not a CFW!

The fact that emuNAND works, on the N3DS using a KARL3DS preview (which apparently is "months" away from release), is sheer madness. That Youtube video posted more than a month ago is just crazy! Why aren't people releasing the CFW already? Keeping it to themselves? Kernel access since what, November? Really?

 

[sblast3]

If you have an O3DS and a N3DS and convert your Card-1 games/saves to Card-2, GW is an extremely efficient way to run rom dumps on both consoles with the same save data (though this requires the use of Card1to2 and SDF). A .cia or a 3ds loader wouldn't have the same convenience, and would require dumping/restoring save data files to each SD card every time a game is saved.

Homebrew developers really should be taking advantage of the micro-SD card slot that GW provides. If a .cia installer used that slot, then there would be no worry over having available 2x the size of a .cia to install it. I'm sure there also other ways a second sd card can be used.

In addition, the "DRM" thing prevents mainstream piracy, which is a good thing. Look at what's happening with the ESA right now. Most of it is not from GW, but from the 4.5 CFW. Why do you think Nintendo didn't block Sky3DS, even though they can easily measure power output to see if the card has a processor in it? It doesn't affect the mainstream market. Believe it or not, Nintendo's main target audience in the west is kids, 99% of which are incapable of purchasing a flash cart. These "stability updates" aren't directed mainly at GW, but at the 3DS scene in fear of a free signature-patched CFW being released before the end of the 3DS' life span.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Its a $60+ microsd reader. Just another mount point to put roms on. They could have easily worked the software to load from the big sd card, but you can't sell software to pirates, can you?

 

[cracker]

Its a $60+ microsd reader. Just another mount point to put roms on. They could have easily worked the software to load from the big sd card, but you can't sell software to pirates, can you?

Yes you can! (But only once.)

Although it may be a DRM ploy, it is nice to have a cart you can pop into your different systems and play from. Also for testing games out it sure beats waiting for cias to install. But the facts are that GW has helped the scene a lot so they aren't just leechers like many other cart companies are.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

EmuNAND isn't portable

Don't actually need to use emuNAND though.