- A Nintendo Switch 2 owner was reportedly banned after playing legitimate second-hand games that were later found to be cloned
- Reddit user ‘dmanthey’ says they were able to reverse the ban after speaking to Nintendo
- Nintendo has been cracking down on piracy by restricting consoles caught using piracy tools
A Nintendo Switch 2 owner is warning players about buying pre-owned physical games after being banned for unknowingly playing cloned versions.
Last month, it was reported that Nintendo was cracking down on piracy and had begun blocking access to online services on the Switch 2 if players were caught using MIG Flash, a tool used to create copies of games.
But it seems that even innocent players aren’t safe from the company’s strict anti-piracy policy.
As reported by IGN, Redditor ‘dmanthey‘ shared a post saying that they were banned by Nintendo after loading up some original Switch games they bought from Facebook Marketplace.
The user explained that although the physical copies were legitimate, they later discovered that the games had already been copied by the original owner, which was the reason their console was restricted.
“Switch 2 users – be careful buying used Switch 1 games. You can get banned if a bad actor dumped it,” ‘dmanthey’ said. “Got banned and unbanned after simply downloading patches for 4 Switch 1 games I bought from Facebook marketplace.”
Dmanthey explained in the thread that they unknowingly played original Switch cartridges that were cloned using a piracy-enabling device.
“Basically, a thief buys/rents a game. They make a copy for themselves using the MIG dumper,” the user said. “They resell the original game and keep a copy for themselves on their MIG. Then both of you get banned when the Switch 2 goes online. Only one of you has the carts, so that’s the person that will be unbanned.”
Thankfully, dmanthey was able to get unbanned after speaking to Nintendo’s customer service and providing evidence of their purchase and conversation from the Facebook Marketplace seller.
“I contacted Nintendo support and found out I was banned,” they said. “They had me pull up the Facebook Marketplace listing and take some pics of the cartridges. The whole process was painless and fast.”
‘Dmanthey’ added, “The amount of info they had is crazy”.
“They could see my ddwrt endpoints, the brand of my memory card, they even knew that I had an EVGA mouse and keyboard plugged into my Switch 2,” they continued.
Another user was faced with a similar situation last month after they purchased pre-owned Switch 2 from Walmart, only to find that it had been ‘bricked’ by Nintendo after booting it up.
