ROM Hack Question What data is contained in a save file ?

[Freloque]

Hello guys,

I'm wondering if a save file from a game I legally own, created on a Switch with CFW can lead to a ban on another clean Switch.
Let's say I transfer the account on the clean switch or even inject the save onto the NAND backup of the clean switch. Would Nintendo be able to tell that the save does not come from a clean switch ?

I have trouble finding answers because everyone want to avoid a ban on their Switch but what about the official way to transfer a save (transfer account or cloud saving) if you don't care about the ban of the first Switch ? Would the clean Switch be banned just for the save file ?

Thank you for the answers.

 

[FAST6191]

Are you planning to modify or cheat in the game on the custom firmware?

If you create a game in which the only way you could have got certain items/stats/times/whatever by cheating then they could detect that and subsequently ban you. Indeed I would put good money on them having already banned some people for such a thing rather than for failing tests.

Account transfers themselves... theoretically they could have a flag in there saying "modded" but have not issued a ban yet and then use it to declare your unmodded Switch as tainted. I don't know that they would outside of the cheating thing. Speculation but grounded in consumer reality is they might deny you that save or something.

Nintendo have issued account level bans in the past (indeed the first major one for modding saw Nintendo seemingly trace back through their logs and find others linked to it) but right now it is console level. You would be foolish to think they don't have the list of people that are banned and try to correlate that between IPs or emails or similar in a "formerly naughty" list somewhere, however there is not a lot you can do about that one outside of isolating things.

Short version. A simple account transfer should be fine. Fiddling with the NAND maybe not so much as it is not like old consoles and things are tied to profiles and whatever else these days, and you would want to be fairly sure the injection method is clean. Cheating and mods might be fine but could open you up to a ban if you do things with the cheat/mod that could not be done via normal play.

For a majorly long PC game with all sorts of rare drops and what have you I could see transferring things around. Is there anything on the Switch you could not easily replay in fairly short order?

 

[Freloque]

Are you planning to modify or cheat in the game on the custom firmware?

If you create a game in which the only way you could have got certain items/stats/times/whatever by cheating then they could detect that and subsequently ban you. Indeed I would put good money on them having already banned some people for such a thing rather than for failing tests.

Account transfers themselves... theoretically they could have a flag in there saying "modded" but have not issued a ban yet and then use it to declare your unmodded Switch as tainted. I don't know that they would outside of the cheating thing. Speculation but grounded in consumer reality is they might deny you that save or something.

Nintendo have issued account level bans in the past (indeed the first major one for modding saw Nintendo seemingly trace back through their logs and find others linked to it) but right now it is console level. You would be foolish to think they don't have the list of people that are banned and try to correlate that between IPs or emails or similar in a "formerly naughty" list somewhere, however there is not a lot you can do about that one outside of isolating things.

Short version. A simple account transfer should be fine. Fiddling with the NAND maybe not so much as it is not like old consoles and things are tied to profiles and whatever else these days, and you would want to be fairly sure the injection method is clean. Cheating and mods might be fine but could open you up to a ban if you do things with the cheat/mod that could not be done via normal play.

For a majorly long PC game with all sorts of rare drops and what have you I could see transferring things around. Is there anything on the Switch you could not easily replay in fairly short order?

Thank you so much for the reply !

I did not do anything fishy with the save like modding or cheating and I don't plan to, it's just my Zelda save with about 100 hours gameplay (again, I own the Zelda cartridge). So I just bought a new Switch to go full legit but I would like to get my Zelda save back to continue the game on it.

FYI, the 1st Switch I want to use to transfer my save to the 2nd is not banned at the moment, it has NEVER been online and I never used it to play games illegally, I just used Checkpoint for the save. But anyway Nintendo force you to be online and to update to transfer account.

So for you the best move would be an account transfer between the 2 Switch ?

Thank you again !