Is homebrewing Wii U safer than Switch?

[leejaclane]

I was just going through Switch forums on here, and it sounds to me like everything you do on Switch with any custom firmware or homebrew carries a measure of risk (piracy being the biggest risk but not the only risk) of being banned if you go online because telemetry on how you use Switch and what you install is always being collected and reported to Nintendo.

Is that not true for Wii U? Like, I've heard people say it's safe to go online in games you don't own while using Tiramisu, but that seems like it'd carry a huge risk. Surely something as simple as checking NNIDs on a console for eshop purchases would be done every sign-in, right? Like say you downloaded Splatoon through NUSspli, or Super Smash Bros. for Wii U through NUSspli, and you went online. There's no way for Nintendo to detect illegal copies? There's no risk of your Wii U, or worse, your NNID account, being flagged or banned?

 

[tmnr1992]

Yes.

 

[Deleted member 586536]

For 3ds and Wiiu it's not as big of a risk as switch. As long as your not cheating online, and make sure telementry on those systems are turned off or disabled, pretty much gaurntees you can mostly do whatever you want. The only exception is the 3ds, and specifically anything that is built into the system dlc wise (aka streetpass plaza. Which you can get a ban if you pirate the dlcs and then go to the eshop)

But yeah it is true. Overall the ban risk is substantially lower than the switch.

The switch is a telementry hog, and a near blackbox. The mere act of running atmosphere to my knowledge is safe. But anything else? holds some risk. With as you said, installing titles is the biggest issue.

The only thing I can think of is that modding a game on wiiu (via sd caffine) and that possibly banning you (like a gameplay change and going online). But the catch is also, if you were to be banned. Unbanning the 3ds and wiiu is stupidly easy. While the switch is once again. Might as well be 20 levels harder/there is no unban method we know of.

 

[leejaclane]

So, admittedly I don't know much about these things. If Nintendo caught you using homebrew on Wii U, or playing pirated content, and they took action, would that just affect that Wii U? Or do they do account bans? Like. Would my Switch be affected? And besides what was already mentioned specifically above, is there anything else in specific to avoid as a potential risk for Wii U?

 

[Deleted member 586536]

So, admittedly I don't know much about these things. If Nintendo caught you using homebrew on Wii U, or playing pirated content, and they took action, would that just affect that Wii U? Or do they do account bans? Like. Would my Switch be affected? And besides what was already mentioned specifically above, is there anything else in specific to avoid as a potential risk for Wii U?

Nintendo usually bans the console. The only time they did account bans was if you managed to play a game early. Aka the sun and moon situation.

The real risk of the wiiu however. Is managing to not brick yourself. The console is extremely volatile. Both from hardware, and software. Launch wiiu's had really bad flash chips, that resulted in them dying prematurely. In some cases I've heard if the nand gets too full, it's a brick as well. And the problem with the wiiu, is that we don't have a good recovery solution.
The 3ds is cracked completely wide open, so it's our play thing, and same with the switch.

The wiiu however, currently relies on a exploit when OS10 has already loaded (aka the main main Wiiu operating system before home menu/launch id is loaded)
And as a result, if your bricked on IOSU (the wiiu's built in armchip, which handles security and the initial boot process) and you don't have keys dumped and nandbackup, your screwed. Entirely.
If you do have them dump, to fix it you have to hardmod. Which can be a bit of a pain to open the console and get there in the first place. Let alone soldering.

We do have two boot one exploits, but it's not implemented in a meaningful end user way (such as using for custom firmware that you can just easily install, and additionally adding brick recovery, assuming even those can enable that)

 

[Deleted member 586536]

Dammit now I'm reminded that the disc drives are paired to the board, and the system won't boot without a disc drive either, or more accurately, won't boot into wiiu home menu.

 

[leejaclane]

So to reiterate then, the worst case scenario for detection of cfw/homebrew/piracy on Wii U is just that Wii U being banned in some way, and NNID accounts connected with 3DS or Switch wouldn't be targeted? Not that they care about the Wii U much at this point, particularly with the eshop closing, but if they automated their system (which I assume they would for efficiency), then human beings not caring would have little to no impact on automatic bans or flaggings.

It's safe to use the Wii U's built-in game update system for titles you don't own too, right? I downloaded digital versions of games I own physically using NUSspli rather than using disc dumping methods because it was just easier for me, and I let them update through launching the games rather than downloading the updates through NUSspli. Should I not have done that?

I'd just hate to have my Nintendo account or my Switch affected, mostly. There are a lot of games I own on Switch, and more that I intend to buy on eshop at some point. I know I could pirate them, but I'm not much of a piracy person -- I don't think there's anything at all wrong with piracy from a moral or ethical standpoint, I just generally prefer not to do it myself for reasons I don't feel like explaining.

 

[Deleted member 586536]

So to reiterate then, the worst case scenario for detection of cfw/homebrew/piracy on Wii U is just that Wii U being banned in some way, and NNID accounts connected with 3DS or Switch wouldn't be targeted? Not that they care about the Wii U much at this point, particularly with the eshop closing, but if they automated their system (which I assume they would for efficiency), then human beings not caring would have little to no impact on automatic bans or flaggings.

Yup the NNID wouldn't be banned. They don't target them.

It's safe to use the Wii U's built-in game update system for titles you don't own too, right? I downloaded digital versions of games I own physically using NUSspli rather than using disc dumping methods because it was just easier for me, and I let them update through launching the games rather than downloading the updates through NUSspli. Should I not have done that?

Yup that's fine. On 3ds it's a little more questionable, primarily because Nintendo tightened security on 3ds, but not for wiiu.

I'd just hate to have my Nintendo account or my Switch affected, mostly. There are a lot of games I own on Switch, and more that I intend to buy on eshop at some point. I know I could pirate them, but I'm not much of a piracy person -- I don't think there's anything at all wrong with piracy from a moral or ethical standpoint, I just generally prefer not to do it myself for reasons I don't feel like explaining.

NNID's and Nintendo accounts are generally treated as seperate. so if your NNID goes. Your Nintendo account will likely be fine

 

[leejaclane]

Wait, there's a difference between NNID and Nintendo accounts? Oh yeah, I remember linking them now. I totally forgot about that, that's right, Switch doesn't have Nintendo Network IDs. Maybe I should unlink those. I mean, I suppose I wouldn't be able to buy new games on Wii U if I did that, but I'm not really looking to buy eshop games on Wii U at this point anyway and the ability to do that by adding funds to a Nintendo account has a pretty short life left on it.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna unlink those just in case. I mean, they might be flagging you in some way where they just aren't taking action yet, putting you in a database for suspicious activity or something. Then again, if that was the case I'd likely already be flagged. Plus I'm pretty sure I used the same e-mail for everything. I wasn't really thinking ahead. I don't know. I just get paranoid about this stuff sometimes -- sure their policy isn't going after people right now, but policies can change, and Nintendo has a history of being incredibly litigious, ruining lives over basically nothing many times now. Maybe something makes them decide to go after people in the future, who knows?

Anyway thanks for the info, much appreciated. I'm a worrier, I worry about things a lot.

 

[Deleted member 673423]

Yes, very true, I have hacked numerous Nintendo consoles over the years and the only one I got banned on... was the fucking Switch shit.

The rest end up working better than normal after I homebrew them.