In bid to prevent piracy, Nintendo now threatens to brick your console

Nintendo has updated its Account User Agreement with a severe warning against “unauthorized use” of its Switch consoles in a bid to prevent emulation and piracy.

Late on Thursday, every Nintendo user with an account received an email with its subject line saying “Updates to Nintendo Account User Agreement and Nintendo Privacy Policy.”

We all know of those, and we usually don’t care that much – there’s too much squinting involved. But sometimes, we should pay attention – and this is one of those times, it seems.

That’s because Nintendo has made quite a few updates to the two main agreements it has with its customers. Some are perfectly ordinary but some signify bigger changes – for instance, the edited wording for the Licence for Digital Products section.

After warning users that they can’t “bypass, modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or otherwise circumvent any of the functions” of the console or the games, Nintendo adds that if they do, the company “may render the Nintendo Account Services and/or the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.”

In other words, prior to the launch of its new Switch 2 console in June, Nintendo seems ready to punish those who hack or modify the device or the games by bricking the gadget. So if you download games online rather than buy cartridges, you won’t be able to play them anymore.

Here’s the original wording from 2021: “You are not allowed to lease, rent, sublicense, publish, copy, modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble all or any portion of the Nintendo Account Services without Nintendo's written consent, or unless otherwise expressly permitted by applicable law.”

Nintendo’s privacy policy has also been updated. Now, the company will be able to record video and voice chats stored on your console for a limited period of time – pending your consent, of course.

The new feature comes ahead of the Game Chat feature, which will be available on Switch 2. Players will be able to video call each other during gameplay.

Nintendo wants to make sure that users – presumably mostly the concerned parents – who encounter “language or behavior that may violate applicable laws” could complain and enjoy a “safe and family-friendly online environment.”