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

 

[V-Temp]

That's neat, I wasn't aware of that either.

Don't feel bad! Most don't know how fighters handle 'data' transfer between clients and that it is actually just button inputs being translated on each user's screen.

This is also why good netcode is so important for a fighter, so that button inputs are translated as best and fluidly as possible!

As for Splatoon 2, they've had these additions since June. Most hacking reports had ended shortly after that so its been doing its job quite well for a month+ now. It will eventually be defeated but then it will simply be updated further, but you look to weed out the hacker population as they can be 'corralled' in a finite fashion due to both the ability to ban all dauth/game access (and if they really want, revoke the TLS cert) and limit on Switches people can/will hack.

It will become rather expensive in the long run to keep doing it as you need to keep buying new Switches without banned dauth permissions for Splatoon.

 

[chrisrlink]

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.

nah nintendo's too much of a dick to do so even if it helped them out in the end knowing them they'll take ALL the credit

 

[TheDarkGreninja]

That’s great news as long as it works.

 

[Reecey]

Excellent stuff! I just hope they do the same for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and others if necessary. Congrats to the hacker as well whoever he/she maybe!

 

[Deleted User]

they even flagged harmless mods too which is sad but at least it will prevent some hackers

 

[Deleted member 420418]

Finally, this game was riddled with hackers and i could barely play ranked!

 

[BloodRose]

they even flagged harmless mods too which is sad but at least it will prevent some hackers

There's not really any such thing. You shouldn't be modding online games at all. Period.

 

[Slartibartfast42]

There's not really any such thing. You shouldn't be modding online games at all. Period.

What's wrong with cosmetic mods?

 

[Deleted User]

What's wrong with cosmetic mods?

honestly yeah, what's wrong with a model edit? or music? or text?

 

[BloodRose]

What's wrong with cosmetic mods?

Because they're only ever 2 steps away from someone changing their avatar to a giant penis.

Also in order to use them you need to connect online with a modded firmware which is a violation of Nintendo's ToS anyway.

 

[8BitWonder]

Because they're only ever 2 steps away from someone changing their avatar to a giant penis.

Even if someone edited their model or changed images to be explicit like that, everyone else would only see the normal model/textures online.

Unless you're talking about editing the nnid profile picture with devmenu. Then yes people would see that, but that isn't game modding.

 

[FAST6191]

What's wrong with cosmetic mods?

If it is purely local cosmetic then it is hard, however to differentiate between them and wholesale cheating in real time in a way that won't be immediately bypassed is difficult. You also have the more subtle things like if I changed the enemies to bright glowing neon pink (or if the level is bright glowing neon pink then the opposite of that) and thus made things far easier to see, gave myself translucent walls (trying to guard two entrances to a choke point as a single unit is hard, far easier if you can see which is coming), or something similar.

 

[linuxares]

What's wrong with cosmetic mods?

Bright Pink and Bright Green characters pops out more than the standard models no?

 

[BloodRose]

Put yourself in N's shoes. What would you do? You know your platform has been compromised but you're planning on launching your first ever subscription based gaming platform in a few weeks and especially want to appeal to families, an area often largely ignored by your main competitors.

Are you going to be more concerned with the security and reputation of your platform or the "rights" of a few geeks to make their characters blue instead of green?

 

[Slartibartfast42]

Put yourself in N's shoes. What would you do? You know your platform has been compromised but you're planning on launching your first ever subscription based gaming platform in a few weeks and especially want to appeal to families, an area often largely ignored by your main competitors.

Are you going to be more concerned with the security and reputation of your platform or the "rights" of a few geeks to make their characters blue instead of green?

Nintendo isn't very bright, so they make the wrong decisions all the time anyways. Nintendo is being very mean with these bans for example. It's totally unfair to the 3rd party developers. Banned people can't buy 3rd party games. These bans are a death sentence to them. Banning people from playing a pirated game online is one thing. The bans should be much more local. You shouldn't also ban people from playing their legitimate gans. And you sure as hell shouldn't ban them from buying more games. That makes no fucking sense. Nintendo is a bunch of a overpunishing prudes.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

It's not rocket science. Just develop a kids mode and a cheating mode and let people play the way they want. You realize there's a ton of adult gamers who won't buy Nintendo because they are too kid friendly. Why can't Nintendo be both? Hire competent programmers and they could.

 

[Deleted User]

Nintendo isn't very bright, so they make the wrong decisions all the time anyways. Nintendo is being very mean with these bans for example. It's totally unfair to the 3rd party developers. Banned people can't buy 3rd party games. These bans are a death sentence to them. Banning people from playing a pirated game online is one thing. The bans should be much more local. You shouldn't also ban people from playing their legitimate gans. And you sure as hell shouldn't ban them from buying more games. That makes no fucking sense. Nintendo is a bunch of a overpunishing prudes.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

It's not rocket science. Just develop a kids mode and a cheating mode and let people play the way they want. You realize there's a ton of adult gamers who won't buy Nintendo because they are too kid friendly. Why can't Nintendo be both? Hire competent programmers and they could.

Honestly it's against their TOS to have a modded console but they shouldn't prevent people from still playing games it's defeats the purpose of a console. Pirated games are a different story, they shouldn't be taken lightly. But it honestly hurts the consumer and the company, sure they are profiting from people rebuying consoles after getting banned but it's going to get annoying. Deep down hackers love their games and want to get more out of it. Hacker's do what Nintendon't. Stuff like this wouldn't be bad if Nintendo let people do it in the first place. Emulators exist because people want to play classic games because the company doesn't care about virtual console anymore. Rom hacks because people want to play a game in a different way. (No, I don't mean cheating, I mean like a romhack of a pokemon game or a mario game.) There are people out there who don't want to cheat and they shouldn't be treated like trash because they modded their console. But then there are people who are dedicated to ruining other's online experience.

 

[Grmmish]

Ummm... Nintendo adds a "Anti-cheat" method to everything they do... Such as their consoles. XD What makes this so special?

Good!

Cheaters do not belong on multiplayer games.

PUBLIC ONLINE SESSIONS* you mean.

 

[Jayro]

I give myself snails and chunks using SplatHex, just because the grind for them is maddening. It shouldn't take so freaking long for me just to get my gear the way I want them to be.

 

[FAST6191]

Ummm... Nintendo adds a "Anti-cheat" method to everything they do... Such as their consoles. XD What makes this so special?

The don't though, and what few attempts that they made in the past were pitifully weak.
When this was originally posted hacking was still somewhat new but we had seen a few bans among those developing the hacks and thus we were beginning to see Nintendo might actually be trying to play this time.