Splatoon 2 Hacked; Nintendo’s Anti-Cheat System Bypassed Just One Day Before Switch Online Becomes Paid

Splatoon 2

Nintendo has always been the amateur player when the discussion revolves around online functionalities. Be it the company’s multiplayer matchmaking systems, the servers or personal data storing, Nintendo constantly lacks behind other developers in the industry.

Nintendo’s very own Switch Online service which allows you to play games online is turning into a paid service starting tomorrow. However, just a day before Switch Online could turn into a paid service, hackers found a way to cheat Nintendo’s internal anti-cheat system.

Splatoon 2, one of Nintendo’s highest-grossing titles is currently the victim of this hack. To no surprise, it isn’t the first time the game’s facing such issues. Cheating was becoming a severe problem in Splatoon 2 since its early days as the server accepted almost any data the client sent it. You could just modify the ROM and start playing dirty in no time.

Later in August, Nintendo implemented an internal anti-cheat system to tackle increasing cheating issues. But as it turned out, the system wasn’t as effective as expected. The anti-cheat system basically checked the integrity of the files before uploading them to the server. Although it reduced hacking issues for quite some time, the fix wasn’t permanent.

As pointed out by ResetEra member Atheerios, who has a long history in reporting Nintendo media, hacker(s) have overcome Nintendo’s anti-cheat system, hacking into Splatoon 2, yet again. This time around, the hacker is seen having infinite ink, levitating and throwing infinite bombs and taking no damage at all.

The hacker even placed himself on the top of the leaderboard, as represented by Twitter user OatmealDome.

Twitter user Br0ck.c0m shared a clip of the hacker’s in-game activities.

Here’s another clip where the hacker’s seen moving and jumping around even after being splatted.

Let me tell you an interesting thing. The hacker had to hack his own system to beat Nintendo’s anti-cheat system. So now that he’s spotted by many, Nintendo will block his system from participating in further online matches.

The newer Nintendo Switch models are said to be unhackable and that only the older versions had such loopholes. As of now, there are over 20 million hackable Switch models out in the wild. Even for the newer models, hackers have already figured out certain exploits and are waiting on the Markio revision, which is the pending SoC (system-on-chip) update that will revise and improve the console.

We’ve contacted Nintendo to comment on the situation. We’ll update this article as soon as we have an answer.

Make sure you subscribe to our push-notifications and never miss an update on Nintendo Switch and related. Until next time, Happy Gaming!

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