A few weeks ago, it was reported that a Splatoon 2 hacker had utilized an over-the-top method to beg Nintendo to add anti-cheat to their game. He had broken the leaderboards by hacking them to show the top results as "Please, Add, Anti, Cheat", making an attempt to get attention to the matter, and asking Nintendo to do something, whilst getting banned in the process. Coverage of the incident made its way to multiple gaming sites, but after the initial incident, it was assumed that nothing happened.

Now, according to the Splatoon Modding Hub, as of a little over a month ago, Nintendo actually did implement an anti-cheat for Splatoon 2. While the anti-cheat method had been in place, reportedly, it was merely in a test phase, until being rolled out as of recently. Starting the game with any mods present and going online will supposedly "flag" your console, and after a day, Nintendo will ban you.

Nintendo has introduced integrity checks in Splatoon 2 since version 3.1.0. [...]
(Khangaroo from Splatoon Modding Hub) has discovered this, I am now publishing this post. For Nintendo's sake, I won't be going into detail about how it works as of yet. It seems that bans are applied one day after the game flags you.

Beware: the game will flag you regardless if you use the mods online. Simply starting the game with edits is enough to flag you.

The following activites are probably still safe:

• Model edits
• Music replacement
• Text mods
• Save edits, provided what you are doing can be considered as legitimate
• and more...

Note that the above activites aren't guaranteed to be safe in the future.

Source

 

[DinohScene]

Good!

Cheaters do not belong on multiplayer games.

 

[VitaType]

Good, good. It just needed the release of the second iteration of the game and then some months more to add anti-cheat features to a game that is build around multiplayer. Good, good. Nothing strange here.

(At least now they did, but client-side checks aren't that helpful)

 

[RitchieRitchie]

Cheaters ruined Mario Kart on the 3ds. The bastards.

 

[Chary]

Knowing Nintendo, people will probably find a workaround to getting past their checks in a short amount of time.

It's like they're just entering 2007

 

[VitaType]

Knowing Nintendo, people will probably find a workaround to getting past their checks in a short amount of time.

They check on your console. All you have to do is to modify the game code to not send that flagging. It indeed needs abit more skill then edit some models, but e.g. everyone who can write a aimbot without help from others will be able to do the needed changes.

 

[Vieela]

I hope that this doesn't get a workaround, or that it does get one in the very end of the console. Cheating online ruin it in multiple ways.

 

[Song of storms]

They check on your console. All you have to do is to modify the game code to not send that flagging. It indeed needs abit more skill then edit some models, but e.g. everyone who can write a aimbot without help from others will be able to do the needed changes.

Can't they check for any edit on the game?

 

[spotanjo3]

Glad to hear that. Those people used that are sick and disgusting people. STOP!

 

[Bladexdsl]

now add this to mario kart before it turns into the wii again...

 

[Skittyusedcovet]

Im glad they finally fixed this. I was worried to go online in splatoon. I guess i go online again.

 

[8BitWonder]

It's nice to see anti-cheat come to Splatoon 2, hopefully it can be replicated in MK8 and eventually Smash.

Though I do hope we'll be able to freely mess around with cheats in non-competitive and singleplayer titles.

 

[supergamer368]

This really should’ve been implemented right from the start. Multiplayer games can be hacked, and are frequently so. It’s not fair to let all the hackers have the best stats when you work hard in the game to make progress. I’m honestly amazed that it took Nintendo this long to realize an anti-cheat was needed.

 

[PrincessLillie]

It's about time. Nintendo may be great at lots of things, but preventing online hackers has never been one of their strong points. It's nice to finally see some form of anti-cheat.

 

[MasterJ360]

Well I'm glad save edits aren't in harms way as of yet. I imported a 100% complete save like 3 months ago.

 

[GensokyoIceFairy]

hello stupid message to purge

 

[Subtle Demise]

Can't they check for any edit on the game?

If you wanna sit and wait for the game to check the MD5 hash for every file and then compare the results with a server-side database every time you go on multiplayer, sure.

 

[McWhiters9511]

Cheaters ruined Mario Kart on the 3ds. The bastards.

yeeet

 

[GensokyoIceFairy]

If you wanna sit and wait for the game to check the MD5 hash for every file and then compare the results with a server-side database every time you go on multiplayer, sure.

And sha1 and md5 aren't even 100% reliable, i'm pretty sure there was an incident once where something got hacked and somehow had the same hash

 

[Axido]

When someone needs to get banned in order to point a company to flaws in their software.

Gg, Nintendo. I would guess for such a contribution the guy hacking the leaderboards deserves a second chance.