Hardware Mig Switch on Switch 2

[ankerede]

I'm keeping my switch in airplane mode 99% of the time and never play online, but some of the switch 1 games need an update to even run on the switch 2. So what i did is, I put every game I want to play on the SD card, quickly click through the games with the mig switch, so the switch 2 creates a shortcut. I'll then remove the mig switch, connect to the internet (no nintendo account) and start all the updates.
Once finished, I delete my wifi connection and go back into airplane mode.
I've only been using the mig switch since FW 1.2 and only full backups (5 files present for each game), so far no ban and I've been operating like this for almost 3 months and my switch is also on the latest firmware, 20.3. Unfortunately I had to update the switch, to receive the game updates.
Obviously I cant guarantee that its 100% safe and I'll never get banned but you will have a working game library even if it happens. I probably have enough content for 2-3years.

 

[hexdump]

(deleted)

 

[dolpf]

I've only been using only full backups (5 files present for each game)

Do you use dumps of your cartridges or dumps from a Russian torrent?

 

[TheStonedModder]

I'm keeping my switch in airplane mode 99% of the time and never play online, but some of the switch 1 games need an update to even run on the switch 2. So what i did is, I put every game I want to play on the SD card, quickly click through the games with the mig switch, so the switch 2 creates a shortcut. I'll then remove the mig switch, connect to the internet (no nintendo account) and start all the updates.
Once finished, I delete my wifi connection and go back into airplane mode.
I've only been using the mig switch since FW 1.2 and only full backups (5 files present for each game), so far no ban and I've been operating like this for almost 3 months and my switch is also on the latest firmware, 20.3. Unfortunately I had to update the switch, to receive the game updates.
Obviously I cant guarantee that its 100% safe and I'll never get banned but you will have a working game library even if it happens. I probably have enough content for 2-3years.

This is posted several times a month…

Offline mode or airplane mode doesn’t do a single thing.

The only safe way to use the MIG is with personal or private backups.

Anything more than 4 people per game triggers a ban from my testing

 

[ankerede]

That is true, just wanted to share my experience and that it has been going fine basically since day 1.
What maybe makes my approach a little different to others is that you initially stay offline for as long as you can and create shortcuts for as many games as you can. Eventually you will have a game that needs an update to even start on the switch 2. That's when you remove the MIG, quickly so the updates and then turn it off again.
I'm fully aware that Nintendo can ban my console, but I don't care and so far it's been working great. I've done the whole process 3 times now.

Post automatically merged: Aug 28, 2025

Do you use dumps of your cartridges or dumps from a Russian torrent?

nc

 

[soadownz]

Anything more than 4 people per game triggers a ban from my testing

If this were true then anyone whom borrowed from the library would be banned I can definitely say that is not happening.

 

[ankerede]

I feel like there is a lot of guessing happening right now and people are making up stuff with anecdotal evidence. Yet when you look at RU tracker it's a much more relaxed atmosphere.
I think it's sufficient if you 'DON'T play online' with the MIG.

Post automatically merged: Aug 28, 2025

I would also like to know how that has been tested. So you bought 4x switches, 4x MIG switches, got one new game, created 4x copies, played online with all of them at the same time and all 4 got the ban?

Obviously you also tried 1, 2 and 3 switches beforehand and waited at least 2 weeks in between for a ban.

That's a lot of testing for what?

 

[SecureBoot]

If this were true then anyone whom borrowed from the library would be banned I can definitely say that is not happening.

I feel like there is a lot of guessing happening right now and people are making up stuff with anecdotal evidence. Yet when you look at RU tracker it's a much more relaxed atmosphere.
I think it's sufficient if you 'DON'T play online' with the MIG.

Post automatically merged: Aug 28, 2025

I would also like to know how that has been tested. So you bought 4x switches, 4x MIG switches, got one new game, created 4x copies, played online with all of them at the same time and all 4 got the ban?

Obviously you also tried 1, 2 and 3 switches beforehand and waited at least 2 weeks in between for a ban.

That's a lot of testing for what?

Guys, this is not an argument you want to start. StonedModder has done incredible testing that has been verified by other users time and again. If you use the Mig Switch with pirated games, you will be banned. Airplane mode will not save you. Factory reset will not save you. Jury is still out on if you can use the Mig Switch on Switch 2 at all without being banned. There's hundreds of pages of documentation in the other thread if you're really that interested

 

[hexdump]

This is posted several times a month…

Offline mode or airplane mode doesn’t do a single thing.

The only safe way to use the MIG is with personal or private backups.

Guys, this is not an argument you want to start. StonedModder has done incredible testing that has been verified by other users time and again. If you use the Mig Switch with pirated games, you will be banned. Airplane mode will not save you. Factory reset will not save you. Jury is still out on if you can use the Mig Switch on Switch 2 at all without being banned. There's hundreds of pages of documentation in the other thread if you're really that interested

Just to confirm, if you keep your Switch 2 offline (using only local connections) and update your games through a non-banned or unhacked Switch over the local network, there’s no risk of getting banned, correct?

Sure, this risk will arise when you connect later in case a hack appears or whatever but using the switch 2 this way I described before, is key to be able to update the games as I have understood from other's comments.

For some, this can be seen as an Autoban, but I have a lot of original and some torrented switch 1 games yet to play with the bigger switch 2 screen and don't mind wait for a hack to kick in.

 

[TheStonedModder]

Guys, this is not an argument you want to start. StonedModder has done incredible testing that has been verified by other users time and again. If you use the Mig Switch with pirated games, you will be banned. Airplane mode will not save you. Factory reset will not save you. Jury is still out on if you can use the Mig Switch on Switch 2 at all without being banned. There's hundreds of pages of documentation in the other thread if you're really that interested

I am hoping to get caught up with my unemployment bills at the end of September

Hopefully I can get a few switch 2 systems then and do the same testing there.

From what I’ve been reading and seeing tho, I think switch2 is similar. Specifically wether shared private dumps with 4 people or less is safe still.

Post automatically merged: Aug 28, 2025

I feel like there is a lot of guessing happening right now and people are making up stuff with anecdotal evidence. Yet when you look at RU tracker it's a much more relaxed atmosphere.
I think it's sufficient if you 'DON'T play online' with the MIG.

Post automatically merged: Aug 28, 2025

I would also like to know how that has been tested. So you bought 4x switches, 4x MIG switches, got one new game, created 4x copies, played online with all of them at the same time and all 4 got the ban?

Obviously you also tried 1, 2 and 3 switches beforehand and waited at least 2 weeks in between for a ban.

That's a lot of testing for what?

I’ve been game sharing since SXOS days playing online with CFW and still have not been banned

Game shared between 4 switches. 2 launch day ones..my every day system and my 24/7 automated twitch plays system (this was connected online with my dumped games and actively running the homebrew channel live on stream.)

Then when the OLED systems came out..I gave that launch model to my sister, and my friends on the other side of the coast bought 2 OLEDs and MIGs ..so I redumped all my games and sent those 3 the files

All 4 of these systems have still been online and playing these games. That twitch channel also still shows the homebrew channel live on stream and even dumping its save files.

So yes. I did in fact buy multiple switch systems, and mig switches. This all is why I consider this thoroughly tested..

4 is the number I am saying is the safe one, because I don’t want to buy more systems than that and know it’s been safe. If someone else wants too feel free obviously

A few buddies in private groups have been doing similarly as well with each other. We all have private libraries floating around

Everyone else sharing games or these little anecdotal things like use airplane mode have been banned time and time again. But not me

Again I don’t 100% know if this is also the case with switch2 since I can’t get one yet..but hopefully I can soon but I don’t for see it being very different

 

[mattmc]

Anything more than 4 people per game triggers a ban from my testing

That is a very different claim from this:

4 is the number I am saying is the safe one, because I don’t want to buy more systems than that and know it’s been safe.

Your testing shows that the second claim is (for now) true, but unless you involved a fifth system and everybody got the hammer, the first claim is not yet verified.

Still, the second claim is useful. I think this "used Switch games can get you banned!!" claim floating around is blown wildly out of proportion if it's not outright just bullshit, so I've been looking around for information. The scenario (person A dumps game, sells cart to person B) has been a possibility for years on the original Switch, but we're only just hearing about it happening to a couple people's Switch 2s? If they were actively hunting for suspicious cart certs from telemetry, I don't see why they would have waited until the Switch 2 dropped to start doing so.

It's possible that person A dumped the game and then distributed it publicly, and THEN sold to person B, who THEN got banned, but even if that were the case, the odds would have to be a million to one because how many times is that going to happen for an individual game? Any given game probably only has a few unique dumps floating around on the Internet these days because of the way we circulate information.

And the two cases everybody points to when discussing this include some rando on Reddit who seemed way too confident he understood the mechanics of the situation, and some dude on X that had previously spoken about owning a Mig, and has since deleted the post with the claim.

 

[CosasLocas]

HUGE DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT

With this said, this is how I THINK this works:

First, remember each game cart has a unique identifier. (This will be important later)

Whenever you connect your console to internet, it always send a report to Nintendo saying which game cart you used, and when (what time you started playing and what time you ended playing). This is the "Telemetry" everybody is talking about.

They do this for several outcomes. One is to check which games are most played, another is to know how much time people play on their consoles, etc.
And one is to control piracy.

On the piracy term, they put reports together, and if the same game cart has been used at the same time for more than X consoles, during Y time, then that game cart is pirated.

What is "X"? Don't know, can be just 2, 4 or 23. My logic says 2 (if the same cart is used in two consoles at the same time, one of them is pirated) but can be any number depending on how easy-on-people Nintendo wants to go.
What is "Y"? Again, no clue. Can be 32, 4 or 2 hours. They can decide that if you made a copy for yourself, and then lend the cart to your friend, and both are using the cart for just one hour it's OK.

And it should be! A really possible scenario: I have the Chimichanga Game cart, I play it, and realises is a great game. Then I dump it, start playing the game from the dump, and my friend John comes to my house. I tell him how good the game is and lend him the cart. He starts playing at the same time as me, but one hour after, I close my game, and start helping him on getting more chimichangas (which is the objetive of the game)

So we are in the moment that Nintendo (by crossing out data) discovers that cart with id 12345678 has been used on 23 different consoles for a total of 32 hours.

Then they decide that this cart (the specific cart, not the game) is pirated. So it sends out a ban-beacon to all the consoles that used that cart, so the next time each one of those consoles get online, it will get banned.

---

Again, this is my sole-personal idea. I'm not related at all with Nintendo nor any game company (I just drive a bus for work)

 

[dolpf]

No one will ever know how Nintendo tracks and bans pirates.
What's the point of all your theories and assumptions? So that your fantasies can spread across the network and continue to intimidate users?
Every adequate Mig user should be aware of their risks and be ready to get banned at any moment.

 

[bth]

No one will ever know how Nintendo tracks and bans pirates.
What's the point of all your theories and assumptions? So that your fantasies can spread across the network and continue to intimidate users?
Every adequate Mig user should be aware of their risks and be ready to get banned at any moment.

Correction: You specifically do not currently know.

Several others, including myself, do know, hell, even scires knows, I tried to pester him a few times in past to snuff out that kind of telemetry.

what we got instead of protection against that kind of telemetry, was the stopping of creating error reports that libnx created, as nintendo would instantly ban for telemetry received containing libnx error codes, and errors in general are a red flag for nintendo.

it's not rocket science, it's not something unexplored or uncharted. For the MIG it's lotus related telemetry, which did not exist in earlier firmwares, of course, in the early stage of the switch you could use sxos's xci loader and injected certificates to play online games just fine by just (pre dns.mitm) using a self-hosted dns server locally to redirect the telemetry domains, and/or forcibly activating the eu telemetry codepath.

I speak of that first-hand, i tested 4 different first-party games online by injecting super mario odyssey's cerificate, and 7 third-party games, using the same certificate, played online, and the console was never banned.

(*) online games as in, games requiring Nintendo Switch Online subscription, actual games with multiplayer modes interfacing with genuine other players.

Why? because they hadn't implemented the telemetry for that yet.

 

[CosasLocas]

No one will ever know how Nintendo tracks and bans pirates.

PLOT TWIST: I'm a Nintendo anti-piracy enforcement undercover agent, sniffing into forums to get always one step ahead of pirates!

hahahhaa JK, I'm here for the LOLz

Peace

 

[soadownz]

Guys, this is not an argument you want to start. StonedModder has done incredible testing that has been verified by other users time and again. If you use the Mig Switch with pirated games, you will be banned.

I just checked and I am 'still not banned'

Pointing out logical falicies and untruths is good. Arguments from authorities including Nintendo are not good.

 

[SecureBoot]

I just checked and I am 'still not banned'

Pointing out logical falicies and untruths is good. Arguments from authorities including Nintendo are not good.

I don't know what your setup is. Are you using only your own backups or public dumps? If the former, you're good. If the latter, it's a matter of when not if

 

[soadownz]

it's a matter of when not if

ok mr nintendo

*edit* one day we will be dead should i wait for that to happen until....does that prove you wrong?

 

[SecureBoot]

ok mr nintendo

*edit* one day we will be dead should i wait for that to happen until....does that prove you wrong?

No I just want you to use your brain for 5 minutes

We know that:

1) Nintendo collects telemetry on the games you play, even when not connected to the internet. This stays on your console even after factory resets. We've known this since 2018 I believe
2) Nintendo is able to identify when a game has been pirated
3) Nintendo bans pirates from online services.

It's 1+1=2. It's clear that you're new around here, which is okay. There's no shame in not knowing something. However, you don't come into a class where you don't know the subject and act like you know better than the teacher.

The point is, your ban is coming. You've already banned yourself by staying on airplane mode, but the real one is imminent.

 

[Divineheresy88]

So is the MiG switch safe if you've dumped all your own roms? I know people were on the fence for awhile. Is the consensus that it's safe now or still risky?