A Washington federal court has ordered r/SwitchPirates moderator James ‘Archbox’ Williams to pay Nintendo $4.5 million in damages.
A Washington federal court has ordered r/SwitchPirates moderator James ‘Archbox’ Williams to pay Nintendo $4.5 million in damages.
Oh gods, freeshop on the 3DS. When the thread popped up on the GBATemp forums I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Then when I tried it I couldn’t believe how Nintendo fucked up so hard. XD
As soon as the first proof of concepts showed up (a command line PC tool that generated CIA files from a key pair, followed by CIAngel which did it directly on the 3DS but still needed an installation step via another app) it was only a matter of time until someone Frankensteined the open source CIAngel and FBI together and slapped a cute browse UI and json parser on top. Thus freeShop was born.
The 3DS was already thoroughly pwned before freeShop, but pirates still had to actually use a yucky computer to download yucky “files” to do their thing. FreeShop opened up piracy to a new level of tech-illiterate user, and when Nintendo closed the gaping security hole those pirates that didn’t know what a .cia file actually is were left floundering. That was the scene that inherited Switch piracy. Dozens of competing closed-source “shops” that all used their own proprietary databases to pretend to be freeShop. Paid piracy apps. All so that users wouldn’t have to plug in their microSD card (later, the Switch itself via USB) to pirate games. Traditional “download the file from a torrent or trusted HTTP source and then put it on the SD and install it” piracy was always possible in the “shops” era.
You know, that’s interesting, because I was never exposed to all the paid “freeshop” apps. Maybe it’s because I has been pirating for quite a while at that point, or because I hung out on the forums where the developers discussed their projects, but when Freeshop stopped working I just used Boop.
The main issue I had with installing 3DS games was that you needed double the space on your SD card; for the installation files and for the game you’re installing. Remote installation with FBI using Boop on PC was the solution to that after Freeshop died.
Yeah, the ease and safety (and incredibly good/available guides) of piracy on 3DS made it so a lot of kids/noobs got in during the freeShop days and just kind of expected piracy to always be that easy. “Actually finding and having a reliable source for the game files” is always the actual hardest part of piracy, but freeShop kids never had to do it.
Oh I was pirating before 3DS piracy became easy. I got on as soon as browserhax was discovered, and then you still had to go through a whole process where your 3DS could get bricked if you did the wrong thing. RXTools made it a little easier, but the guides for it weren’t that written for it, and eventually the creator ragequit because he hated piracy.
Well then…
Then Luma3D came and basically made piracy a one-click solution. Well, almost.