Nintendo Drops The Ban Hammer on Pokémon Sun and Moon Pirates

This happened around 24 hours ago now...nonetheless, I'm sure there is a workaround coming soon. If you have an actual, physical, game you bought however, Nintendo actually is accepting refunds for the games, take that for what you will.

(And yes, we should have seen this coming, but considering Nintendo has actually NEVER thrown down the banhammer until now, even in instances like this, you can tell they're really serious about this for once...)

Lol it's hard to feel sorry for them, even if they were just "trying it out". There's a demo that covers the basics and gives you an idea on what the full game and several playthroughs of the first couple hours that you can judge from. You stole an illegal code and got caught. Sucks to be you.

Ha!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. 😂

Now didn't you all see that coming Who'd have thought parading around the internet with information before it's officially would get you banned.

They're pirating the game and playing it earlier than the rest of us. They knew the risks, so I don't have much sympathy with them.

Edit: that was just aimed at the pirates. I've heard speculation (dunno if true) that people who got the game early legitimately are also getting bans. If true, that seems harsh for them.

The pirates I'm ok with, they deserve it....but for getting the game early? Really? :c
(not that I ever get my games early, but still, lol)

Good, serves them right.

@Ed_Fairway I love your avatar.

Serves them right.

All piracy, hacking and cheating should be dealt with in this way.

At least in video games; cheaters never prosper.

That subtitle was too easy.

Yeah, no sympathy for people who are pirating the games. There's a demo available to "try it out" for a reason. These people were doing stuff they weren't supposed to and got caught, now they are paying the price for their decisions.

I don't understand this brand of schadenfreude. They have still have been playing the game for a week+.
Who are the real suckers?

Heres what I'll say; hacking your 3DS is one thing, but then DLing a ROM of the new unreleased pokemon game, AND THEN PLAYING IT ONLINE is another. I've waited 3 years for gen 7; I can wait a bit longer.

@jimi I can't say I understand your argument. I've been a long-time reader of Nintendo Life, and as far as I'm aware, their policy on moral grey areas hasn't changed. If something's big enough or news-worthy enough, like certain emulators can be, it's reported on, but in no way endorsed or linked to. That's no different here. I'm sure you can see apostrophes were used around "try it out" to show that it's no excuse for piracy, and the whole article takes a negative view, like it should do. I, personally, don't see any hypocrisy here...

It's funny.
Everything is blowing up lol

And BTW, it's not only pirates. People who got the early retail copies are being banned too.
Apparently reviewers were told to not use the online features, since Ninty knew this was coming.

Plot twist, Ninty leaked the games so they could trap and identify most pirates and get rid of them :>

@jimi Well... they weren't simply stealing, it's more complicated than that. Hence, you can't call it 'simply' stealing.

Not that i support what they did (we got a demo for a reason) but I can see what NL said what they did.

Makes sense. I got banned from Miiverse for mass spamming spoilers. I was salty. Don't judge me.

@jimi people have been reporting that they have a legit retail copy and they got banned too.

Perhaps nintendo can't correctly identify if it's from a cart of installed.

However, the ban is mostly targeted to pirates, so I guess that's what the main intention of the PR was in saying that

Apparently these people are now selling their 3ds systems online on craigslist. watch out.

Yeeeeah, served!

It's too bad that Nintendo's new scorched-earth brand of anti-piracy/hacking takes out legit users who got the game early (not their fault if online retailers jump the gun as they love to do), but refunds are a fair enough consolation for taking out the immense load of trash that is Pokémon online hacking/piracy specifically.

@Tsurii ...Someone told me that people were also banned for getting the game early. >.>

@jimi You're welcome to disagree but that doesn't actually change anything.

There are people who download roms to test a game before buying it. These are the people NL are referring to. These people exists and any claim that they don't will fail.

This is likely why NL grouped them separately. This situation is more complicated than just blatant stealing. There are those that are simply stealing the game and those that are downloading it to try it out before buying it. Clearly, the latter are in the minority but they do exist.

@World supposedly, people who are in this position are calling Nintendo support, and they've been asked to mention where they got the game, and if they can provide a legit picture of the game.

@Gridatttack That seems fair. In the days where online retailers keep breaking street date, it's reasonable that there'd be a few false positives out there.

So they decided to download the game before release then connect it to Nintendo? <_>

@jimi why don't you go ask them instead?

I'm merely relying information found to discuss here, but if you can't chill out or stop white-knighting that piracy is bad, then good day, not going to bother replying.

@Xaessya Right? Why on earth would you play a game designed to be online while being online and expect not to be caught?

They definitely deserve this. If you want it, buy the game, stop stealing games!

@jimi I think I get what Nintendo Life is getting at. To me, it seems like they are demonstrating how these pirates think they have an excuse to steal the games, while others just do it with no mercy at all. Either way, it's not an exusable thing for people to do, and Nintendo's right to clamp down on it, I'm sure we can ALL agree on that. Otherwise, it may just be an undortunate turn of phrase with no harm intended that we shouldn't be reading so much into. Let's all chill on the matter! We know what's right and what's wrong, and I trust Nintendo Life 100% on that.

@Kalmaro
Least we can say all those pre-orders should mean that they should still have a healthy launch

@jimi Okay, first of all, you need to calm down. We have rules against profanity, even if it's hidden.

Second, I never said that they weren't pirates, just that to only call them pirates would not explain what all they were doing. They are not just stealing a game, it's more than that. However, we don't have a word to describe that yet so they were grouped differently.

"So let's assume those people play it for 20 hours and then go "oh well, isn't worth full price or nothing at all". Is that now okay with you as well?"

How does that fit with what I said earlier? I specifically mentioned people who are downloading the game illegally and then buying it, so your description does not even work. NL is clearly talking about the small group that get the game early and then buy it.

Just.. calm down please and read carefully, it's hard to take you seriously.

@Xaessya Ha, so true. I'm so pumped for friday!

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

@jimi By "trying it out" i think they mean the pirates that are gonna buy the game they are "trying out", nonetheless it's still piracy and should be dealt with efficiently.

Go Nintendo!! Hahaha to the thiefs

Them's the risks of being a pirate.
Interesting that it took Nintendo this long to do something about it.

Frikkin morons. They deserve to be permanently banned from playing Nintendo games online at all. Ban their entire IP's! Get rid of them permanently! I'm sure I'm not the only one salty about having to duck and dive to avoid Sun and Moon spoilers which have revealed the entire game storyline and structure to the community already.

They can't wait like everyone else? -_-'

Patience apparently is a virtue.

@Rhydas That would be impossible, it's easy to get around IP bans nowadays, one can find out how by simply googling it, banning their NNIDs would be more efficient in removing them as they would have to start all over with a new NNID, losing almost everything.

Very much deserved. I just don't think there's truly such thing as sincerely "trying out" a full version of a retail game for free(Well with the exception of sharing a purchased copy as only one player can play it at a time, unlike piracy you can't play a single copy of the game if your friend is playing it). If you're interested enough to want to try it out you really should either buy it, or if you can't afford it wait until you can afford to buy it and play games you do own in the meantime.

If you don't think the game is worth playing without being able to play the full game for free... there's thousands of other games out there. There will be games out there that you think are worth buying and as such there really is no excuse to be pirating a game that you don't think is worth buying.

"It's hard to feel too sympathetic for any that have received bans, we'd suggest."

Unquestionably so: they're in the wrong.
This doesn't excuse the rampant gravedancing when it comes to punished pirates, as it gets out of hand very quickly.

@KickButt_Gaming Whatever works, really. There needs to be a permanent fix for thieves like this.

You get what's coming to you as a theif

@AlexSora89
I agree. "Kicking them while they are down" just doesn't feel right, regardless of what those people did, and this comment section is full of that. It's a bit embarrassing, actually. We should be better than that.

Hope they have a plan for hacked 'mons this gen.

@Rhydas Preach!

Good to hear. Glad Nintendo is issuing the ban hammer over this.

I will never understand why people think it's ok to pirate and/or steal games. Developers work their butts off to make these games and people just steal them and spit in their faces. I have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone that had their 3DS online functionality bricked over this. Serves them right.

@EmmatheBest Somebody might have mentioned this already (Don't have the time to read 50+ comments, hehe) but Nintendo recently revised the way they do console bans. Those guys who were messing around on the Miiverse were using an easily exploitable method in the 3DS' software, but Nintendo has since revised their console banning methods to use either a console-specific file on one of the 3DS' main chips chip (which would be pretty hard to mess with, not to mention less experienced users could dick around too much and break their system entirely) or Ninty could have used those banned console's MAC addresses, which would still be super hard to get around; more research would be needed to actually spoof said address so the banned console could go online again. It's possible they could have used console specific certificates too which are theoretically replaceable, but you'd actually need another hacked 3DS which also isn't currently banned.

TLDR: They're f*#@ed.

(Also if anybody is that stupid to play a leaked game, not only with wireless on, but to actually access the game's online features...? You got what was coming to you smh)

I have no sympathy, they got what they deserved. If they wanted to "try out" Sun and Moon, then there's a reason why the demo exists...

The argument of trying before you buy doesn't work when there's a demo available a month before hand.

@sonicmeerkat
On the other hand, that was a pretty terrible demo, and hardly representative of the actual game.

Hhahahahha oh my great job Nintendo!

@GeminiSaint
I thought the first reply to my comment - which I'm sure is still an unpopular opinion - would slaughter me then and there. I'm glad to have been wrong.

Nintendo is going to kill us.

"Some may have been 'trying it out'"? The game has a demo, that's what its there for.

No sympathy from me. They should have been able to wait a week or whenever the leak first became available.

Surely they knew the risks, no? Well, too bad for them XD

"Some may have been 'trying it out' before buying the real game, but plenty will have simply been stealing copies."

The way I understand the apparently contentious statement,
the quotation marks around 'trying it out' are an indicator of sarcasm so the intention behind it is that NLife doesn't buy the excuse that some people are simply trying it out and qualifies why in the next clause by saying that "plenty... [are]... stealing" the game.

I hope the Switch is pirate-proof. There seems to be such a legacy of piracy on Nintendo consoles. It perhaps needs some harsh consequences to break the habit.

@GeminiSaint I guess I would have to ask what a good demo would contain specifically?

Some people have too much hype. They will do anything as long can get the game for free , even by illegal way. Those mindset for being extreme cheapskater should be banned.

They asked for it.

Quite frankly, they were idiots to have been caught.

It's very easy to turn off the 3DS's wireless functions, thus masking your device's activity from Nintendo.

I support punishing pirating, but doesn't this method also affect people who may have gotten their copy early by legitimate means? I personally support the consumer over the business, so if consumers who've received their copies early are also getting punished, then I'm against this wholeheartedly. I don't believe in punishing masses if there's even one innocent among them. That's just who I am, as unreasonable as that is.

@Kalmaro By that logic, it's okay to steal a chocolate bar before purchasing one, you know, just to check if it's actually tasty.

People forget there's also money involved in game development, and the company takes a big hit if everyone starts downloading the software without paying a single dollar for it.

Pirates Beware ☠☠☠

Good work, Nintendo. Now figure out how to enforce consequences for the rest of the Pokemon cheaters and hackers (PKHex and whatnot).

Great That's Service With A Smile !
GTAB

Excellent!

It's a shame that Nintendo can't tell the difference between a pirated and legitimate copy considering some people got banned despite purchasing the game.

@jimi Do you understand the use of 'single quotation marks'? I saw that as a dig at the people who pirate with the excuse of 'trying it out'. And some of those may have bought the actual game, or even have a pre-order fully paid off. Still serves them right for breaking the law.

@BenAV In a game with online battling, it sucks when you come up against a cheater who blasts you away. I don't mind losing badly to someone who is merely so dedicated they spent 100's of hours of breeding and training to build the perfect team of super Pokemon, in fact I appreciate their skill and dedication. But when someone just cheats and gets an even better team in 3 minutes, that ruins the game for everyone.

@AlexSora89 There's a difference between gravedancing and laughing at the tantrums of those finally getting punished for years of law breaking.

@MadAdam81 "Even better team" isn't due to hacking more or less just knowing how to build their sets better. Time is irrelevant, some players don't have the time to soft reset for 7 weeks to get a 5 IV heatran.

Any illegal pokemon do not work over online functions so if you lost to a darkrai its cause you lost to a darkrai, not because it was a hacked one. The only issue is the time it took to build the team, well you shouldn't be fighting good teams unfinished with yours to begin with. There's no advantage for the enemy player for building their team in 3 minutes while yours was in an hour.

Not pirating the game by leaking rom hacks which players can optionally download instead of buying the real games, that's a big deal that changes the company (finacially)

@BenAV I'll never understand why cheating is so widely accepted in Pokémon. Anyone who wants to treat the game like a battle simulator is free to use one.

I would say being able to create a team out of nothing in minutes would classify as a competitive advantage. But the sad part is that I'm the one with the unpopular opinion here within the Pokémon community.

XD Serves them right. As for legit physical copies getting banned, there's one of 2 ways that can happen.

1: The game shares the same code as the code that was put on the banned list

2: The legit physical game was sold before the game was to go live, which the systems would mark it as an illegal copy by default.

@BenAV Players who want to participate in vgc should play the games as the developers intended.

Nintendo should only just ban people from accessing online services on Pokemon S&M (I'm still not able to get over that name, lol), not take away access to their entire eShop library. The least Nintendo could do, as a compromise, is restore eShop access to those who call their Customer Service line and confirm through a satisfactory means of determination that one has indeed bought a legitimate copy of Pokemon Sun or Moon.

Even though taking away eShop access is supposedly a legal act under the Terms of Service, I think the people who are affected that cannot have their accounts restored should still get together and file a class action suit if they can, anyways. It's going too far to remove access to potentially $100s worth of products that you bought, if Nintendo ultimately refuses to restore access to one's account.

This would likely be illegal if this happened with most any other company based in Europe, since EU law ensures access to digitally bought products, and overrides corporate law. Nintendo is just getting away with it because they default on using pro-corporate US laws (e.g. Millennium Copyright Act) internationally.

Be an armchair vigilante all you guys want, but this is still an anti-consumer act on Nintendo's part.

My heart truly weeps.

@BlatantlyHeroic That's not unreasonable at all. You're thinking from a humane perspective.

This was the perfect response and I feel no sympathy for those affected. I almost wish Nintendo banned their IP address!

I didn't get banned and I've had these games for weeks.

Lol lol hahahaha lol

Won't be rubbing anything in my face.

But of course I purchased these games as well so it would be a little harsh for someone to go judging people who are actually supporting these games simply because they like the benefits and convenience of playing games they're paying for early, importing and exporting save data, etc.

Sometimes I think people are just jealous they don't have access to play the games early. There's no other explanation for people harboring so much resentment towards others when they don't even know if those people are actually stealing or not.

@jimi I'm guessing you've never heard of the concept of shareware game spawning...

I have already purchased my game, but I have 2 more 3DSes so it would be pretty easy to mod one of my old 3ds with a different account, but who would be stupid enough to play the online mode of it. I'll just have to wait.

@BenAV
No most people don't have the option. You have to have a hardmod for any firmware beyond 11.0 and even then it's a very complex hack that took me roughly 5 hours, and I'm experienced.

Think very few people have the ability to do so. Which is why I chalk it up to secret envy.

I could appreciate someone not condoning piracy, but to actively mock those getting banned when a good majority of people with modded 3DS actually buy their games and just like the convenience of digital without forfeiting a physical collection, or they like fan translations, or save modifications and backups, etc... there's no explanation.

Even if a person was stealing, it's no sweat off the back of others and no reason to feel such hostility toward them ( unless of course people are secretly envying what they don't have access to). I see a person steal a Snickers bar, I don't suddenly hate that person for it because it's not my business.

@Captain_Gonru Exactly, either receipt information or the serial number of the copy should suffice to restore eShop access through Customer Service, for those with legitimate copies.

Good. Stealing is Stealing. period. If i guy walked into a gas station and stole a bag of chips just to see if he liked them before buying, he still stole them. Same concept here, only with a much more expensive product. I'd say that getting online privileges taken away is a pretty light punishment all things considered.

The really stupid thing about all of this is that Error Code 002-0102 can be bypassed on properly modded units, so both pirates and legitimate players can resolve the problem and play online again anyways. They just encounter Error Code 022-2812 if they try to make a purchase on the eShop. So Nintendo hasn't actually prevented any pirates from playing Sun & Moon, not even from playing online. This is just another half-baked DRM tactic with an indiscriminate "attack everyone" policy that only truly punishes legitimate consumers, including some who didn't use the online features at all. (This indicates that Nintendo may specifically target early installers, rather than just early online players.)

So no, the Ban Hammer attack was actually not effective... like, AT ALL.

@JaxonH I'm on the same boat.
I wasn't banned either, but yeah, the hostility as you put it is an interesting perspective.

Anyway, won't be playing anymore until I go get my physical copy of moon this friday.
I'll play Xenoblade chronicles X in the meantime. (which I was finally able to get a copy)

Yes, finally!

@Anti-Matter Sorry, but I don't think this is about the "cheapskater mindset" that you always talk about.

@rushiosan show me one time I said it was okay to steal.

Banning pirates is great, but it's disgusting that they're banning people who just got their hands on it early. Here in the UK, if you pre-order any game online, you're getting it 2-3 days early, and that's including from Nintendo's own store. There's nothing illegal about having that before street date.

@JHDK Thanks, same to you.
@Peach64 I can agree on that. It's a case of a broad swipe rather than a precise cuts at the problem, like trying to remove a tumour with a kitchen knife . Heck, I remember getting X 3 days early (on the same day I was bedridden ). Enjoyed and played it for the duration I could get out of bed. Ironically I finished the game on the day of the official release.

Good on them, is all I can say. There's a demo available and it's being released in a lot of countries so there really is no excuse.

Only those stupid enough to play the game's online features were banned, the rest of the pirates/reviewers/whatever actually have common sense and weren't.

Source: My friend who preordered the games wanted to play it early avoided using online features and he can still use the e-Shop.

("This isn't just stopping online play in Sun and Moon, but reportedly in some cases blocks access to the eShop too; for those with games they want to re-download, for example, that's a major problem.")

This actually isn't a big deal, how do you think pirates get their games? lol

@Iggly and all they have to. Do is provide a picture. Of your physical copy.its more for downloads anyway.i did speak with Nintendo before I started. My copy of sun yesterday.

How pathethic and desperate are this people that they cannot wait for the release date of a videogame? My only conclusion is that they are either school brats that have a lot of free time in their hands, or part of the Neet generation.
If I cannot buy the game, I'll skip it until I save the money or a sale is coming!
But those that have money and got the Rom because they wanted to "try it out" or "couldn't wait" are real scumbags with serious problems in their lifes.

@JaxonH I don't know how you can compare a snickers bar to a game that has many more components that potentially affects other players. Should we tar and feather the pirates? No. But I see nothing wrong in calling them out.

The 'trying it out' excuse doesn't wash at all. There's a demo available for those people who want to try it first on the E-shop, end of discussion.

If you then still went ahead and downloaded the full game to 'try it out' then your intention was simply to have the full game early without actually paying for it at all (ie. piracy).

There's a fairly easy way for Nintendo to catch people anyway, even if they don't use the online modes....you know that play history thing the 3DS has? The one that shows you how many hours you've played each game for? It'll also show you the very first day you started playing it on. Don't think this information isn't being transmitted to Nintendo every time you connect your 3DS online.

@Peach64 And who's to say that they won't lift the bans on anybody who can provide evidence of that? For all the people I see complaining about being banned, I don't see any of them posting pics of an official physical copy of Pokemon Sun/Moon that they own. And it would have to be a physical copy, as the download versions aren't officially available yet.

@TromaDogg I don't think that's how it works. If that were the case, people who use apps like FBI and other stuff that Nintendo doesn't allow would ALL be banned.

Also, 3DS calendar dates are a thing. I could start my Pokemon Sun save file tomorrow with my 3DS date set to 2004, and they wouldn't ban me for it.

@PotatoTheGreat Fact is, there are multiple ways they'll be able to tell who was playing Pokemon Sun/Moon too early from 'stamps' left on the 3DS as soon as it's connected online.

As I say, those few people who claim to have legit retail copies early, I'd like to see some evidence of that....photos of the box/cart, receipts etc. I've not seen any so far.

@TromaDogg If that were the case those people would have been banned by now. Guess we'll wait and see.

@sonicmeerkat
I would say actual content from the game, instead of throwing together some "unique", demo-specific scenario that's so disappointingly bland and boring. They did this with ORAS too. The ORAS demo was terrible, and it bored me to tears. I almost considered not buying the game because of it. Thankfully, I reconsidered, because the actual ORAS was nothing like the demo. It was, y'know, actually fun.

@PotatoTheGreat There are also people who only used local wifi (or even no wifi) while playing Sun or Moon early, yet they have also had their NNID/Console ID banned.

Arrrrr!!!

@PlywoodStick Sorry dude, going to need a source on that. I haven't seen a single case of that happening so far.

@PotatoTheGreat Until tomorrow in NA, merely accessing the Festival Plaza for local wifi multiplayer, even without connecting online, is enough to get flagged for a ban the next time one connects online, either using NNID, or the eShop. (Even if you don't have wifi turned on, just to take a look at it.) Users on GBATemp have reported this happening; obviously there's no official report. Incidentally, the sources for findings on what is actually going on are posting in GBATemp... The linked Kotaku article's material is also sourced from GBATemp.

@MadAdam81
Fair enough. My point wasn't about the laughing-at seen in this particular scenario, but rather the rampant gravedancing seen whenever hackers and pirates are punished.

@AlexSora89 While gravedancing may be seen as a little harsh, people really can't complain when others rejoice at them facing justice for their wrongdoings.

@MadAdam81
Sure! As long as the rejoicing isn't mean-spirited. Well, not that much mean-spirited.