No uploading of Legend Arceus saves

[theSLAYER]

As we've received quite a few reports of save file verification blocking people from going online with public saves, we are currently removing every Legends Arceus save that is being uploaded. It will be removed with notice. Additionally, any future uploads will need approval before they appear publicly.

 

For your sake, as well as others' sake, please don't upload Legend Arceus saves.


Cheers.

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[Atrius97]

Due to reports of savefile verification and savefile being banned if they are used by more than one account/switch, we STRONGLY suggest you don't use publicly uploaded savefiles obtained outside Project Pokémon either.

Importing/exporting individual Pokémon files is safe, and uploads of .pa8 files/collections of .pa8 files will be permitted on Project Pokémon, but full savefiles will not be permitted, as it poses a potential ban risk for all users of said publicly shared savefile.

[english09]

Wow, interesting - so they're now using Save file identification to ban Switch's using reoccurring save files? Which part of the save files do you think they're using as the "identifying factor"? Beyond just name/TID/SID? Is there an ID number for a save file itself now?

Is there anywhere we can read more about this particular "issue"?

Edited February 7 by english09

[pokedummy227]

would trading pokes between a public save on a banned switch to my own on a not banned do anything?

 

jw cause the could start blacklisting OT's/TID's on public saves and ban people having traded pokes from those blacklisted

[theSLAYER]

Unfounded speculation: I think they may be storing the profile’s Nintendo Account’s unique ID somewhere, not just plain OT/TID/SID.

Or, hear me out. Saves that goes online in older games get a unique identifier issued from the server. The server could log and pair your Nintendo Account and the Unique identifier on their end. So sorta like a HOME tracker situation: server logs data and matches it to the tracker (or in this case the unique identifier). 
 

Could they log OT/TID/SID combo of people who have done bad bad trades? They could, we don’t know. We don’t work for them.

[arjjjjjjie]

Are the reports of console bans or just game bans?

Do we know if anybody has tried migrating their save file to another Switch (using non-official tools e.g. JKSV) and injecting the save to a user tied to the same Nintendo account? Does this result in the same type of ban?

[Atrius97]

10 hours ago, arjjjjjjie said:

Are the reports of console bans or just game bans?

Do we know if anybody has tried migrating their save file to another Switch (using non-official tools e.g. JKSV) and injecting the save to a user tied to the same Nintendo account? Does this result in the same type of ban? 

Not even game bans, the "ban" is lifted if you stop using the blacklisted savefile.

The ban does not occur with official transfer methods, like local save transfer between two switches within the same Nintendo account. I would assume if the Nintendo account remains the same, their check clears, even if you moved it with JKSV or Checkpoint.

Edited February 8 by Atrius97

[PLAFiles]

So...don't go online with them? I'd never go online with saves I downloaded anyway.

 

I feel like SAVs should still be allowed, just obviously don't go online with them. That's a given.

Edited February 8 by PLAFiles

[theSLAYER]

3 hours ago, PLAFiles said:

So...don't go online with them? I'd never go online with saves I downloaded anyway.

 

I feel like SAVs should still be allowed, just obviously don't go online with them. That's a given.

No means no.

If we don’t even host saves, people can’t “not read the don’t go online” warning and won’t end up online a shared save.

If we host saves, people can “not read the don’t go online” part; they’ll go online without ever seeing the warnings.

Besides, those are only reported and observed issues. There could be more issues than that weren’t observed and thus went unreported. Something like this was theorised by mods privately, so we are not at all surprised to see it happen. Only surprised it took them so long. 

So until something changes (like the reports were proven to be bad, and/or it’s not as bad as initially reported etc),  I don’t foresee changing that ruling.

[pokedummy227]

you really would' expect bdsp to impliment this first mainly cause PLA only has a trade function and no online battling so i agree a dumb move to impliment it this late in the switches life cycle shoulda done it wit sw/sh

[Atrius97]

14 hours ago, pokedummy227 said:

you really would' expect bdsp to impliment this first mainly cause PLA only has a trade function and no online battling so i agree a dumb move to impliment it this late in the switches life cycle shoulda done it wit sw/sh

They implemented this new verification into ACNH quite late. There is no reason they can't decide suddenly to implement it for LGPE, SWSH, or BDSP.
There's a HOME compatibility update on the horizon, I don't expect them to suddenly upgrade verification for all 6 remaining game versions, but the chance isn't zero.

[arjjjjjjie]

On 2/8/2022 at 3:53 AM, Atrius97 said:

Not even game bans, the "ban" is lifted if you stop using the blacklisted savefile.

The ban does not occur with official transfer methods, like local save transfer between two switches within the same Nintendo account. I would assume if the Nintendo account remains the same, their check clears, even if you moved it with JKSV or Checkpoint.

Interesting. Are there multiple reports that corroborate this? Any that refute it? It sounds like (with my limited knowledge of how Nintendo/TPCi do this) the game generates a UUID for the save when it first connects to the internet and checks it against its database of other saves’ UUIDs. If the UUID already exists, it blocks access. 

[theSLAYER]

6 hours ago, arjjjjjjie said:

Interesting. Are there multiple reports that corroborate this? Any that refute it? It sounds like (with my limited knowledge of how Nintendo/TPCi do this) the game generates a UUID for the save when it first connects to the internet and checks it against its database of other saves’ UUIDs. If the UUID already exists, it blocks access. 

There are multiple reports about it, hence why said ruling is in place here. 

[Atrius97]

7 hours ago, arjjjjjjie said:

Interesting. Are there multiple reports that corroborate this? Any that refute it? It sounds like (with my limited knowledge of how Nintendo/TPCi do this) the game generates a UUID for the save when it first connects to the internet and checks it against its database of other saves’ UUIDs. If the UUID already exists, it blocks access. 

Given how GameSync ID used to work for prior games, this is very likely the case. Unfortunately, we can't trust players would upload exclusively saves that had never been online before, and the Project Pokemon staff would be forced to verify each savefile individually.

On the other side of that coin, exposing that value publicly to be edited/"removed from saves that had been online before" opens up an avenue for potential abuse/exploits that could cause TPCi to introduce additional telemetry and/or kick off another banwave.

Edited February 11 by Atrius97

[Mario60866]

I know that the save file is connected to the Nintendo account, and that's how they can tell that multiple people are using copies of the same save file. The files are automatically backed up into the Nintendo account and that's how Nintendo can keep track of this.

[theSLAYER]

@Shadow ninja read this post.

[ryuko2002]

@theSLAYER previous post seems a bot account, most likely a virus. An admin may want to take a look and erase if necessary. Thanks for the hard work!

[theSLAYER]

I've flagged the account as spammer, and removed the offending post. In the future you can just report the post to us :3
(as in when you click on the 3 dots at the top right hand corner of the post, there's actually a report feature )