Nintendo’s Anti-Consumer Anti-Piracy Measures Also Reduce The Value Of The Switch 2
When it comes to the anti-piracy efforts taken by some of the more aggressive companies out there, such as Nintendo, the most frustrating part of the whole thing for me is just how completely short-sighted those efforts tend to be. Take Nintendo’s updated EULA for its Switch consoles, for example. The updated agreement makes several changes from its previous iteration, but the most notable is that Nintendo says that if it thinks you’re doing the piracy for any reason, it can suspend all kinds of services on your console, up to and including bricking it completely. And, while the company has yet to go the bricking route so far, it has already begun suspending all online services on consoles for the use of MIG Switches, cards for Switch devices on which you can load legitimately extracted ROMs from purchased games, or pirated versions of the same.
Now, the first layer of how this is short-sighted is easy enough to see. In order to engage in copyright protectionism, Nintendo is risking long-term reputational damage by functionally ruining the consoles of customers for actions that aren’t illegal, or even immoral. Short term protection, longer term risk of everyone thinking you don’t care about your own customers.
But there’s another layer to this, as a result of these service suspensions being tied directly to the device rather than the person. And that is what this protectionism means for the secondary market for Nintendo Switches.
As spotted by Android Authority, a Reddit poster bought themselves a pre-owned Switch 2 from a Walmart store, only to find it had been previously incapacitated by Nintendo.
“I was driving between work sites and stopped at two different Walmarts,” says user Bimmytung. “At the second one I find a Mario Kart edition sitting in the case and couldn’t believe my luck.” They were informed by the Walmart staff that it was an “open box return,” so it was removed from the box to be checked over, and all looked well. The code for the packaged Mario Kart World had been scratched off already, so Walmart knocked another $50 off the price, and it all seemed like a good deal. Until they got home.
Finally after work I get a chance to set it up. Quickly realize I need the super special micro SD card and none of the ~half dozen in the house would work. Drive ten minutes to Target and get one there and pick up a few other accessories as well. Get home and go to finish the setup—quickly get Error Code 2124-4508. A quick Google search shows me I’m screwed. FML.”
Now, there are several layers of shame here to go around. Shame on Walmart for selling a device without ensuring it would work for the buyer the way it is intended to work. And shame on Nintendo for creating an anti-piracy program such that the punishments meted out are linked to hardware rather than the supposed bad-actor it seeks to punish.
But all of that aside, it should also be true that this sort of thing drives the value of a Nintendo Switch console lower than it would be otherwise. Part of the value you gain when you buy a physical thing is the ability to eventually put it on the secondary market at some point. Because of the actions that Nintendo is taking in disabling and/or bricking its own consoles, that injects a great deal of risk into the prospect of buying one on the secondary market. The value of the hardware is, by at least some measure, diminished.
But because Nintendo seems to only think about these things in the short term, the company probably doesn’t much care.
However, the more immediate issue is for those looking to pick up a Switch 2 from a reseller or previous owner, given their current scarcity at first-party sellers. There’s really no way of knowing at all if a console has been bricked when buying the device online, and this could make the resale market a complete shambles for the whole life cycle of the console. And, grimly, that’s not exactly a priority for Nintendo, given that reselling, either in store or online, gains the company nothing, and some would argue actually costs the company a sale—it’s not like it’ll be in a rush to address the problem.
Which is why I won’t be in a rush to buy a Switch 2 anytime soon. And I’m certainly in their target market, having two young children who desperately want one. Instead of the console, however, they will be getting a lesson in making smart buying decisions as a consumer.