Pirating video games in your Nintendo Swap? Nintendo can render the system ineffective.

• Nintendo has warned software program pirates it might remotely disable their Swap. The coverage change was included in a latest Consumer Settlement replace. Nintendo has a historical past of battles with software program pirates.

Nintendo is stepping up its efforts to combat piracy.

Because it prepares to launch the Switch 2, the online game big has up to date its consumer settlement, informing Switch house owners that if that console is discovered to comprise pirated video games or modifications, Nintendo has the correct to remotely render the system ineffective.

The announcement, spotted by Game File, was buried in a latest replace that the majority customers seemingly did not learn. Ought to customers “bypass, modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or in any other case circumvent any of the capabilities or protections of the Nintendo Account Providers,” it reads, Nintendo may make that “relevant Nintendo gadget completely unusable in complete or partially.”

Nintendo has a protracted historical past of preventing again towards piracy, together with emulator applications, which let gamers run video games with out the unique console (and are sometimes used to play pirated video games). Dolphin, an open-sourced emulator for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube, was a goal of the gaming big in 2023 when it introduced plans to place its emulator on the Steam recreation distribution platform. Nintendo despatched a cease-and-desist order to Valve, which pulled the itemizing. Days later, Dolphin’s builders announced “It’s with a lot disappointment that we have now to announce that the Dolphin on Steam launch has been indefinitely postponed.”

“Nintendo is dedicated to defending the laborious work and creativity of online game engineers and builders,” a spokesperson for Nintendo told Kotaku in Could of 2023.

Final yr, the corporate efficiently shut down the Yuzu emulator, saying the staff behind it had facilitate[ed] piracy at a colossal scale.” The Yuzu staff agreed to pay $2.4 million and ended all operations.

Remotely disabling a gaming system is a brand new strategy, nonetheless. Nintendo, in fact, didn’t element how it might achieve this, however the firm often points system updates, which might embrace code meant to smell out emulators or unauthorized copies of video games.

This story was initially featured on Fortune.com