Hacking PSA: IronFall is the ONLY GAME to force updates on 10.4

[drfsupercenter]

So sick and tired of scrolling through 20 pages of people going "but I spent my money on this game, how crappy!" and talking about phoning Nintendo to complain.

The million-dollar post is from ihaveamac in a different thread with this information
http://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/APT:IsTitleAllowed

Gets whether a title is allowed for launch.

As of 10.4.0-29, IronFall v1.0 and v1.1 are the only titles to be blocked.

That's IT. No paid games whatsoever, and not even other free ones! I used the "old version downloader" through NinjHax to test this, got a copy of Pokémon Rumble World and it acts the same as always, asks if I want to update or launch anyway.

I was going to make a video where I test various retail game carts that have updates on a non-modded 10.4 system to answer once and for all, but I don't even have to, someone's already done the research!

The real question is, can userland exploits (as in, -hax) modify that Is Title Allowed list? If so, it would probably be possible to unblock Ironfall Invasion simply by removing it from that list - you could use any other entrypoint (Cubic Ninja, the browser or what have you) to run a tool to do that.
If not, it would probably need kernel access e.g. Gateway or another CFW.

Now can we please stop getting people whining about "my hard earned cash" because Ironfall is a free download and no other title has been affected by this update.

 

[NekoMichi]

Can confirm, IronFall is the only app triggering the forced update prompt. Tried YouTube and some others, all of them can be launched by dismissing the update nag. (N3DS 10.4 ReiNAND emuNAND)

 

[drfsupercenter]

And not to mention any cartridge games or paid ones. Literally ONLY ONE game is affected and people are freaking out like it's the start of World War 3. >_>

 

[Deleted User]

I'm suprised, actually. Why don't they do it for all games which require an update? What if there's a vulnerability found in 3 other games, and Nintendo has to go through ANOTHER system update just to block those 3 older-version-titles too?

 

[daxtsu]

Nintendo doesn't always do things that make sense. They could easily do it though, see the Wii U, where you can't play online or typically even start games without their updates (however, some games will allow you to start regardless, if I recall..).

 

[drfsupercenter]

I'm suprised, actually. Why don't they do it for all games which require an update? What if there's a vulnerability found in 3 other games, and Nintendo has to go through ANOTHER system update just to block those 3 older-version-titles too?

They already do it if you want to play online though. Look at games like Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 7 or the Pokémon titles - if you try to connect to the Internet without having the title update it refuses to let you on and tells you to go update it. And you can't get on the eShop to download the update without having the most updated system menu. Brilliant how that works, isn't it. (And the fast press-Y-to-update also fails if you aren't on the latest menu)

The reason they don't do it for all games is because they care more about their paying customers than they do the probably 1% of 3DS owners who find and use exploits. Maybe a little more than 1% but still a tiny minority compared to legitimate users. Like people were pointing out, imagine how furious you'd be if you don't have Wi-Fi at home, and you updated your 3DS on a road trip or something only to have it lock you out of games you paid for. That would be an actual problem and something people would probably make a class-action lawsuit over.

But for a free game that's probably only ever used for hacking (I hear the game itself sucks), it's something easy enough to do without angering 99% of the userbase.

Gotta think about it from a business perspective, as they are a business after all.

Edit: also something I believe they did a while back too, there was an exploit in Mario and Luigi Dream Team where you could glitch it into displaying any image you wanted, and in turn post that to Miiverse. I used that exploit, so did tons of others. It caused them to lock the entire community for a while. I believe after that they put in a check so you couldn't post screenshots unless you had the title update which fixed that exploit. So if it's a serious enough problem, they can do it on a game by game basis.

Cubic Ninja has no online functionality, and it's a super old game, so why should they really care if people use it to hack? It's not affecting that 99% in any way. What about actual bugs in games? Like in Pokémon X and Y how at launch the game would break if you tried to save in the big round city... well, then that's on you to update it, you're only hurting yourself if you don't update - not really worth their time trying to force the update on you.

Basically what I'm getting at is that anything online-enabled already does do the update-enforcing and has been for ages. If you want to play a game offline-only and do whatever with it, why should they care?

 

[TecXero]

From the sounds of it, it's hardcoded into the firmware to block IronFall 1.0/1.1. There may be no way to unblock it with userland.

 

[ihaveahax]

From the sounds of it, it's hardcoded into the firmware to block IronFall 1.0/1.1. There may be no way to unblock it with userland.

that's exactly what it is, this check is included with the 10.4 update.

 

[daxtsu]

As far as I understand, the check is deeply ingrained too, so it's not like it's a simple fix (you can use HANS to bypass it, yes, but that itself needs homebrew to begin with).

 

[Deleted member 370671]

Even if it is impossible to launch it from the HOME menu, can it still be launched from Region4 / HANS (even if that wouldn't be really useful)?

 

[daxtsu]

Even if it is impossible to launch it from the HOME menu, can it still be launched from Region4 / HANS (even if that wouldn't be really useful)?

See my post above yours, but yes.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Even if it is impossible to launch it from the HOME menu, can it still be launched from Region4 / HANS (even if that wouldn't be really useful)?

From what I understand, no. Someone mentioned trying it and said it just booted him back to the home menu. I think the system checks if the title tries to launch at all (whether normally or by forcing it with something like HANS) and blocks the attempt.

From the sounds of it, it's hardcoded into the firmware to block IronFall 1.0/1.1. There may be no way to unblock it with userland.

Region locking is hardcoded into firmware too and look what we've accomplished... LOL

 

[VaiCorinthians]

Nintendo is afraid

 

[ihaveahax]

Region locking is hardcoded into firmware too and look what we've accomplished... LOL

region locking is really enforced by the Home Menu. so launch a game outside of it (using DevMenu or something like it still goes though Home Menu) and you can bypass the region lock.

 

[daxtsu]

Region locking is hardcoded into firmware too and look what we've accomplished... LOL

Only in the home menu, as far as I understand. It's not checked anywhere else.

Edit: Gah, you people keep ninjaing me.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Fair enough. But what about something like signature checks? Sure, you need a more...beefy exploit to patch them (e.g. Gateway, rxTools or what-have-you CFWs that you boot from a 9.2 or lower system)

Nothing is impossible. The question is just what level of access would you need to do it?

Given that this firmware JUST came out last night, I'm not expecting an answer any time soon. And it might not even be that big of a deal... given that Browserhax still works so people who don't own Cubic Ninja still have a working way to use homebrew (even if it's a bit more buggy)

Would mainly be interested in seeing a proof of concept that you can remove the check somehow - whether temporary or permanent - I'm almost 100% positive that using a CFW you can do it. The question would then be if the change stays across reboots, making it accessible to userland too.

 

[daxtsu]

The thing about it is, even if you remove the check for Ironfall, it's still not that useful, because you'd need to run homebrew/code to do it in the first place, and if you can do that, then why bother fixing Ironfall? I mean yeah, it'd be a cool proof of concept, but still not that great. And since it's in the firmware itself, that'd require modifying it, which breaks signatures, and there's no realistically easy to use boot-time exploit that we have in our possession like the PSP had, where we boot right into permanent CFW (and again, if you had that, you wouldn't need Ironfall in the first place).

 

[DeslotlCL]

So we can say that ironfall just... fell to its end.

bad pun

 

[Vampirex]

but I spent my money on this game, how crappy!" and talking about phoning Nintendo to complain.

LOL I'd love to see someone try...

"Customer" >> Hello Nintendo? I payed for Ironhax... I mean Ironfall , and it won't let me play unless I update the firmware.
Nintendo Rep >> Please update your firmware and try again.
"Customer" >> NO! I don't want to update my firmware....

You can probably imagine the rest LOL

 

[Deleted member 370671]

LOL I'd love to see someone try...

"Customer" >> Hello Nintendo? I payed for Ironhax... I mean Ironfall , and it won't let me play unless I update the firmware.
Nintendo Rep >> Please update your firmware and try again.
"Customer" >> NO! I don't want to update my firmware....

You can probably imagine the rest LOL

Well, the firmware needs to be updated, with 10.3 and less it still works
But still, it would be interesting to see someone doing this when 10.5 / whatever comes out, since you're forced to accept Nintendo's ToS everytime you update, so if someone says "yeah but I paid for this game and I want to play BUT I don't agree to your ToS anymore", the result could be interesting.