ROM Hack my theory about the only way to play backups online[extremely time consuming, not recommended]

[MeAndHax]

Removed because it doesn’t work after me trying.

 

[DarkFlare69]

Not a good theory in my opinion since that cartridge will be out in the wild again and in use. A ban will still probably happen to you, and maybe even the innocent purchaser of the game card.

 

[MeAndHax]

Not a good theory in my opinion since that cartridge will be out in the wild again and in use. A ban will still probably happen to you, and maybe even the innocent purchaser of the game card.

You can not compare it. Two people or even three using the same certificate is not the same to the amount of people who use it when a game backup gets uploaded on the internet. My guess at least. Nintendo cannot be 100% strict because otherwise innocent bans would happen. For example: If your internet would crash and as you know most of the services don't update every second(instead every 5 minutes(to not to not overload the server bandwith) ) and you would still be shown online and playing the same cartridge until the server refreshes. If you would change the cartridge during the time from the crash and refresh and use it on your second Switch that is connected to a different router with working internet, you would practically go online with the same cartridge and Nintendo would think you play two cartridges at the same time. In this case they would ban you innocently if they did and that would not be fair so that's why a banning method must have a "100% proof of working". Checking if two cartridges are online at the same time does not sound like a good method for me.
Honestly what I think is that Nintendo is "blacklisting" game certificates of games that are published on the internet - so when they see XXXX certificate is going online (the same game certificate that was uploaded on the internet) they instantly know that you must have a modded console to be able to play it with that certificate and they flag your console. It then gets checked by one of the security workers and they trigger the ban (this also explains why consoles get banned at different times).
Besides that, the Worst case is probably the console that will get banned but I want you to remind that cartridge certificate bans are very "rare" so I don't think that the innocent buyer has to worry.

At least it can be working. I don't say that I recommend it or praise to do it.

 

[DarkFlare69]

You can not compare it. Two people or even three using the same certificate is not the same to the amount of people who use it when a game backup gets uploaded on the internet. My guess at least. Nintendo cannot be 100% strict because otherwise innocent bans would happen. For example: If your internet would crash and as you know most of the services don't update every second(instead every 5 minutes(to not to not overload the server bandwith) ) and you would still be shown online and playing the same cartridge until the server refreshes. If you would change the cartridge during the time from the crash and refresh and use it on your second Switch that is connected to a different router with working internet, you would practically go online with the same cartridge and Nintendo would think you play two cartridges at the same time. In this case they would ban you innocently if they did and that would not be fair so that's why a banning method must have a "100% proof of working". Checking if two cartridges are online at the same time does not sound like a good method for me.
Honestly what I think is that Nintendo is "blacklisting" game certificates of games that are published on the internet - so when they see XXXX certificate is going online (the same game certificate that was uploaded on the internet) they instantly know that you must have a modded console to be able to play it with that certificate and they flag your console. It then gets checked by one of the security workers and they trigger the ban (this also explains why consoles get banned at different times).
Besides that, the Worst case is probably the console that will get banned but I want you to remind that cartridge certificate bans are very "rare" so I don't think that the innocent buyer has to worry.

At least it can be working. I don't say that I recommend it or praise to do it.

Your entire idea is based around the assumption and hope that Nintendo does not care if only a few people use the same certificate. From a programming perspective, checking if more than 1 person is using the same certificate is extremely simple and can be written by anyone who's a competent programmer in less than a few minutes (assuming they have been working with nintendo for a while to know how things work there). It would be a lot more work to write out the ban system if Nintendo had extra leniency like you suggest (only major certificates get banned) but that adds a lot of extra variables into the equation. At what point does a header become safe or unsafe? This is a computer that is handing out bans (at least most of the time it is, I believe) and computers do not have any kind of leniency like this. It would be pretty dumb of Nintendo to program some kind of leniency in their automated ban system... "only ban people if more than >5 people are using the header at the same time" or something like that doesn't seem right.

Nintendo cannot be 100% strict because otherwise innocent bans would happen. For example: If your internet would crash and as you know most of the services don't update every second(instead every 5 minutes(to not to not overload the server bandwith) ) and you would still be shown online and playing the same cartridge until the server refreshes. If you would change the cartridge during the time from the crash and refresh and use it on your second Switch that is connected to a different router with working internet, you would practically go online with the same cartridge and Nintendo would think you play two cartridges at the same time.

That's a reasonable way to look at it, but not all that realistic. It takes a while to connect to a game online, it isn't as if people are doing a speedrun to launch the game as quick as possible and connect to the internet and get into a match. Even if they were, that's likely not how it works. My guess is that Nintendo occasionally pings you when you're online in the game and the timestamp of your response code is stored somewhere on their server temporarily. This happens for the entire time you're online. Then, when you connect to the internet on the other console, the timestamp is immediately sent when you connect. If it sees that you're using the same cert as "someone else" (aka your other switch) and your timestamps are dangerously close to one another, it will probably send a ping to that to see if you're still online. If both of you are still online, that constitutes a ban, else it doesn't.

Me and you both are just guessing, either of us could be wrong, but I am trying to take a more technical approach since this is likely how their systems are programmed.

 

[RyDog]

Not only is this extremely scummy, this is just piracy with extra steps. You're going to get the innocent person who purchased your game banned along with with yourself.

 

[MichaelShawJr]

I have to agree with OP. I don't think they will ban for a cert being used a few times at once because otherwise there would be thousands of people complaining by now that they bought a used game or rented a game and got banned. When you pirate a game, the games don't have certs at all, they are cleared before they are uploaded to the internet. I can confirm that I have played backups online without a ban, but I literally mean backups. They are legit backups of cartridges that are sitting at my house unused. I just don't like carrying around a lot of cartridges with me, and sometimes physical copies are much cheaper. For the record though, I use SX OS and use their cartridge emulation software to mount XCI images. You should definitely not do this using NSP because physical games and digital games have completely different certs. NSPs are linked to your console and your Nintendo account where XCIs are not, so if you are running a cartridge game as a digital download, that would be a dead giveaway.

 

[MeAndHax]

I have to agree with OP. I don't think they will ban for a cert being used a few times at once because otherwise there would be thousands of people complaining by now that they bought a used game or rented a game and got banned. When you pirate a game, the games don't have certs at all, they are cleared before they are uploaded to the internet. I can confirm that I have played backups online without a ban, but I literally mean backups. They are legit backups of cartridges that are sitting at my house unused. I just don't like carrying around a lot of cartridges with me, and sometimes physical copies are much cheaper. For the record though, I use SX OS and use their cartridge emulation software to mount XCI images. You should definitely not do this using NSP because physical games and digital games have completely different certs. NSPs are linked to your console and your Nintendo account where XCIs are not, so if you are running a cartridge game as a digital download, that would be a dead giveaway.

Yess, That was actually the only thing i worried about: that headers of physical copies and eshop games could be different
As said I will try a lot of things when the Switch prices go back to 300€ and sacrifice a Switch to test all these and look what will get me banned as mentioned in the first post.

 

[h448]

Game cart rips don't have keys, wouldn't this just be the same as going online with a pirated eshop copy? Converting an XCI to NSP and installing it will still be missing data that Nintendo would obviously be able to see. Unless you try using SXOS to mount the xci as a cartridge, this doesn't seem like it would work the way you hope it does.

 

[DocKlokMan]

This is a moot point. The certificates on game cards that let them go online are NOT preserved when converting them to NSPs. Even if you dump the cart yourself with the certificate data, the moment you convert it to NSP that certificate gets thrown away because NSPs and carts don’t use the same method to validate going online and you can’t convert one to the other. The only way to keep and use a carts certificate to go online with is via XCI mounting.

 

[MeAndHax]

Edit: it does not work.