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Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

nintendolife.com

141–150 of 188 posts

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and buy separate devkit hardware (relatively cheap compared to Wii U days, but still), make an actual game (devkit does not play retail games, and retail console cannot install dev-signed apps), get it through TRC/lotcheck, pay the fees to publish the game, give trailers/launch material to Nintendo, never once mention its secret purpose as a jailbreak, and then secretly share it with all your friends without any…

> never once mention its secret purpose as a jailbreak The switch is completely thoroughly irreversibly jailbroken at the hardware level already. I don't think the secret purpose was to be a jailbreak.

> The switch is completely thoroughly irreversibly jailbroken at the hardware level already.

This has been fixed in hardware revisions since about a year ago. Getting a unit that is vulnerable to the so-called RCM exploit has become increasingly difficult.

(The boot9strap exploit against the 3DS, on the other hand, was never fixed. One wonders why.)

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#142
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo gets a pass on a lot of crap other companies would get torched for by the internet community, DRM, DCMA take downs, etc. Nostalgia is powerful

It's not just nostalgia. Nintendo keeps providing excellent gaming experience that no one else does. Super Mario Odyssey is awesome not because it's the same old Mario guy from NES, but because it is just a great game. Nintendo games are not polluted by the games-as-service and free-to-play monetization mindsets as badly as other platforms. I don't like a lot of their rigidity, such as takedowns or still not getting…

>Super Mario Odyssey is awesome not because it's the same old Mario guy from NES, but because it is just a great game.

See that is nostalgia talking.

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "Just don't buy it" mantra has been applied too broadly. It implies that people have no right to complain about a company, which I completely reject.

The ability to complain about companies is a fundamental right, although it's I important to understand that no one at Nintendo is listening. I personally hate Nintendo and despise the way they prevent young people from modding/hacking their consoles and playing GTA games. Those are the two things I want out of a gaming console, so I don't buy anything Nintendo makes.

I have discovered the world's smallest hill to die on. This is it.

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#144
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to continue the line of thought to absurdity, so I leave that as an exercise to the reader. There's a few lines here that need to be drawn somewhere. Nintendo sells access to a platform to developers. It's not unreasonable that they aren't allowed free reign to control what's run; at some point one developers free reign would conflict with anothers. Should the consumer have free control over what's running…

Very off-topic, but I've seen this twice this week already: it's free rein (as in horses), not free reign [1]. [1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15276/is-this-us...

But since "free reign" has been about since 1834, there's about a 40/60 split between "reign" and "rein", and both make the same sense, I don't think anyone except daft old prescriptivists would care now, do you?

https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/03/26/rein-or-reign...

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#145
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just nostalgia. Nintendo keeps providing excellent gaming experience that no one else does. Super Mario Odyssey is awesome not because it's the same old Mario guy from NES, but because it is just a great game. Nintendo games are not polluted by the games-as-service and free-to-play monetization mindsets as badly as other platforms. I don't like a lot of their rigidity, such as takedowns or still not getting…

>Super Mario Odyssey is awesome not because it's the same old Mario guy from NES, but because it is just a great game. See that is nostalgia talking.

My Mario history is SMB2, then Super Mario Odyssey. If you think I like SMO because of some nostalgia for SMB2, you might want to take another look at both games because there's an astonishing world of difference and very little in common apart from the name "Mario".

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony removed the ability to run Linux many years ago, after it was determined that it was impossible to prevent a jailbreak as long as the second OS feature existed. I’m not aware of Xbox ever supporting this.

Sony did technically 'remove it', although it's still something that can be done if you're really interested in doing it. Nintendo seems to prioritize jailbreaking above everything else and for most of their consoles there's literally nothing interesting that can be done outside of using them to play Nintendo games.

> outside of using them to play Nintendo games

Small nit - you probably mean "outside of using them to play Nintendo-approved games" since there's only 2 Nintendo games on the Switch here and 6 non-Nintendo games.

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#147
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that there aren't any vulnerabilities in the interpreter that could lead to taking over the system?

You would still have to find an exploit for the kernel or other system components in order to break out of the game's sandbox.

That is how a lot of exploits start, though. Certain PSP games used to be valuable because you could present them with crafted save files to root devices.

Although, you could also buy special batteries that would let you root a PSP...what a weird handheld.

The point is, who knows, the game's scripting language could have shipped with an undocumented 'write word to memory' function.

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is okay, just don't buy anything made by Nintendo unless you're ok with Nintendo's restrictive 'nanny console' TOS. You can run Linux and play GTA and Mortal Kombat on other consoles. Nintendo is geared towards people who like Nintendo.

Sony removed the ability to run Linux many years ago, after it was determined that it was impossible to prevent a jailbreak as long as the second OS feature existed. I’m not aware of Xbox ever supporting this.

Two comments on that A) its impossible to prevent jailbreaks no matter if a second OS option exists or not and B) the Linux option was removed since it was seen as an unneeded expense. Its function for Sony was to keep the people motivated to jailbreak a console from doing so. After the removal of the Linux option the PlayStation was jailbroken.

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#149
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the jar has no holes. The jar apparently has holes and the brain inside it can peek out.

I haven't seen any exploits from application level getting access to the OS. There is basically one exploit being used on the switch which uses a bug in the nvidia chip at boot which gives you a higher level of access than the OS and all of the security checks. Its such a powerful exploit that can only be fixed by a hardware change that no other exploit is needed.

Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they don't exist.

And, there has been one pure "software" kernel access released (for 1.0.0), as well as a handful of later kernel exploits that haven't been.

Nintendo is right to be paranoid about ANY code execution, because that is the first step to reducing the pool of end users who can then "root" their consoles.

Re: Indie Game Removed from Switch After Dev Reveals It Has a Hidden Code Editor

#150
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a bug though and not a feature? Also running the inputs to generate compileable code isn't feasible on the original console because of the required precision of the inputs and only possible on emulators?

No, a person can do it on a real console https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0

Thank you, I stand corrected.
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