Nintendo Penalizing Homebrew Users?

An anonymous reader writes "Bricked your Wii? Not only will Nintendo charge you for the repair, they will now add an additional fee if they detect any homebrew software. 'Should Nintendo have to pay to repair hacked Wiis under warranty? Maybe not, but they have no (moral) right to gouge customers out of spite for having the HBC installed. This actually poses a technical dilemma for us with BootMii. As currently designed, BootMii looks for an SD card when you boot your Wii, and if it finds the card and the right file, it will execute that file. Otherwise, there's no way to tell it's installed.'"

Re:Is this allowable by law in Europe?

[lordofthechia]

For the uninformed (mods, looking at you), among other things, the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act (unless I've mixed up Supreme Court Cases) puts the burden on the manufacturer to prove that an aftermarket part or enhancement caused the defect for which the product needs to be serviced.

The homebrew channel would fall under this and since it is easy to remove be no cause for voiding a warranty (like Ford refusing an engine repair because you installed an aftermarket radio...).

Re:Obvious Fake

[Anonymous Coward]

From a comment by the article's author:

The email came with a bit more context (that I did not publish), which was enough for me to believe the email was genuine. Still, I didn't publish it when I received it because I couldn't be certain it was legitimate.

I still can't be certain, of course, but the German invoice was enough for me to believe that it is true. One reason I posted this was in the hopes that others will come forward if this happens to them, so we can get further confirmation.

Basically the homebrew guys are just trying to keep the community informed.

Re:Is this allowable by law in Europe?

[Torodung]

If it is a non-warranty repair, OTOH, then perhaps we need more third party service shops to show Nintendo the error of its ways. I should hope simple competition for repair work would put an end to this sort of shenanigans.

Otherwise, the parent poses an interesting and relevant question. Mods please click the link and *read* the page.

(If mods are Nintendo fanboys or shills modding parent down, I hope you get burned in meta-moderation.)

--
Toro

Re:Is it so hard to understand?

[Renraku]

As someone posted somewhere above, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act covers this kind of thing.

If you brick your system due to failed modification, you're damn right Nintendo can charge you a repair fee. The fee, however, cannot be anymore than they'd normally charge to repair a firmware-dead system.

The MMWA was created because car companies once got together and decided that if you so much as stick a decal on your car that they didn't specifically approve, your warranty was 100% null and void. It does allow for exceptions, however, like if you shot some nitrous through your engine and blew it up. That's not their problem. Refusing to cover bad workmanship that destroyed your engine because you tinted your windows isn't allowed.

Re:Is it so hard to understand?

[abigsmurf]

Except that's not true (even if the act did apply in Germany):

One condition of a full warranty under that act:

"may not exclude or limit consequential damages for a breach of any written or implied warranty on the product, unless the exclusion or limitation conspicuously appears on the face of the warranty"

And in very prominent text on the standard Nintendo Hardware warranty (their caps, not mine):

"THIS WARRANTY SHALL NOT APPLY IF THIS PRODUCT: (a) IS USED WITH PRODUCTS NOT SOLD OR LICENSED BY NINTENDO (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, NON-LICENSED GAME ENHANCEMENT AND COPIER DEVICES, ADAPTERS, AND POWER SUPPLIES); (b) IS USED FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES (INCLUDING RENTAL); (c) IS MODIFIED OR TAMPERED WITH; (d) IS DAMAGED BY NEGLIGENCE, ACCIDENT, UNREASONABLE USE, OR BY OTHER CAUSES UNRELATED TO DEFECTIVE MATERIALS OR WORKMANSHIP; OR (e) HAS HAD THE SERIAL NUMBER ALTERED, DEFACED OR REMOVED."

That condition stands out clearly on the warranty ( http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/manuals/warrantytext_eng.jsp [nintendo.com] ) which itself is fairly short and easy to understand.

Re:Is it so hard to understand?

[TheRaven64]

Germany, like the rest of the EU, has a notion of a statutory warranty. For electronic goods, I believe this is one year from the date of purchase. The manufacturer may not offer a warranty with a period shorter than this. If the user has damaged the device, then the warranty will not cover it, but if they have made unrelated after-market additions then even if the explicit warranty does not apply, the statutory one will.

Re:Is it so hard to understand?

[Fieryphoenix]

And tell me, just what part of "DOESN'T EUROPE HAVE THE EQUIVALENT OF THE MAGNUSON MOSS WARRANTY ACT?" makes you think someone should not post a REPLY describing that Act, or are you so blinded with rage that you failed to read and comprehend the line of discussion that began with that very question?

--
Interested in Deep Water Culture hydroponics? Just ask Khyber!

No...

[msauve]

the M-M Warranty act says essentially 2 things:

1) Warranties must be written in clear language. ("Full and conspicuous disclosure of terms and conditions")

2) Manufacturer's may not, as a condition of the warranty, require the purchase of name brand parts, unless they can demonstrate that such parts are necessary for proper operation. ("No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his written or implied warranty of such product on the consumer's using, in connection with such product, any article or service (other than article or service provided without charge under the terms of the warranty) which is identified by brand, trade, or corporate name;...")

A manufacturer can, as long as they spell it out clearly, void a warranty if unauthorized modifications are made to a product. An auto manufacturer could provide an engine warranty which is void if you hang fuzzy dice from the mirror, but they can't require you to use their brand of fuzzy dice. The MM Act does not put "the burden on the manufacturer to prove that an aftermarket part or enhancement caused the defect."

Feel free to read it [cornell.edu].

Re:Rightly So

[fredklein]

Um, you do realize the story you linked to involves "a BIOS level malware attack capable of surviving even a hard-disk wipe". This is very different from it surviving a BIOS wipe.

Re:Rightly So

[dark_requiem]

I've got a few things to cover here. First of all, we're not talking about a "firmware" mod here. HBC is installed as a Wii channel. For those who are unfamiliar with the Wii's architecture, a brief overview. The Wii uses a three-stage loading system. First, it boots from Boot1, which is hard coded in ROM, can never be modified (I think it's contained in the Starlett core, but with wiibrew.org apparently having been /.'d, I can't double-check now). Boot1 then verifies the signature on Boot2, which is contained in NAND, and as such can be updated and modified. Boot2 then proceeds to verify the signature of the installed System Menu, and verifies and loads whichever IOS version the installed System Menu requires. That's the Wii's boot process, and HBC doesn't interfere with it in any way. HBC relies on a bug in various IOS versions to allow HBC to be fakesigned as a legitimate channel to install itself (original IOS and Boot1/2 versions checked signatures using a strcmp() function which terminated successfully after reading a null byte, so a faked sig just needs to start with a null byte). HBC itself is essentially brick-proof. These guys went out of their way to make sure HBC doesn't brick any Wiis. Now, you can use HBC to load less stable code which could potentially brick your Wii. It's stored in NAND just like any other installable channel, and simply does not take part in the boot process (of course, Team Tweezers' Boot2 replacement, BootMii, will change all that, but that's another mod for another time)

So, Nintendo saying that installing HBC makes for a costlier repair would be a bit like Dell saying it needed to charge more for repairs because a bittorrent client was installed. It doesn't make any sense, since they generally have to blank the NAND before sending it back anyway. Plus, as one of the commenters on the hackmii page pointed out, this creates a stupid situation where a physically damaged out of warranty Wii is actually less expensive to repair than a softmoded Wii. So, if you have a modded Wii go bad, your best option is to destroy the NAND chip to the point of unreadability and send it back, and pay for a normal OoW repair instead of a more expensive repair.

Re:I have to ask

[dark_requiem]

Bricking a Wii with homebrew is easy. Very easy. Bricking a Wii with the Homebrew Channel, alone and unaided is, so far as I have seen, impossible. HBC doesn't brick Wiis, but it allows you to run code that potentially could. There's homebrew code designed to change your Wii's region, there's code designed to allow you to download and install specific updates and packages from Nintendo's servers, and the checking is on the user. You decide to patch your NTSC Wii with PAL updates, you could brick it. Screw up a region swap (the Wiis of each region differ solely on software, the hardware is identical, with the notable exception of Korean Wiis), you could brick it. Plenty of ways to do it. There's been a bit of a "scene war" between Tweezers (the guys who brought you HBC and the Twilight Princess hack) and Waninkoko (although honestly, most of the friction seems to come from Marcan and Waninkoko). Basically, Waninkoko releases an app for the Wii that allows you to do some cool things, but in doing so, makes a brick a much more likely possibility. Tweezers points this out, and gets really mad that he's using their work as a basis for his, and it's a constant childish back-and-forth between them. But the general consensus is, Waninkoko's apps run a higher risk of bricks. It boils down to, do you really know what you're doing?

Re:Obvious Fake

[Malevolyn]

Windows 7 upgrade, $50, $200 if you have firefox installed? ..

You must not have a Wii, because it's quite a bit more complicated than that. For the sake of the community, allow me to explain:

There are ways to run homebrew on a Wii without leaving (much) trace. The problem is that this is really inconvenient to do, so most users opt to install the Homebrew Channel. This is where Nintendo believes their justification comes in. The install method includes using a hacked save file for Twilight Princess. The horse's name in the game has been changed to induce a stack smash, enabling some shell code to run that launches the Homebrew Channel installer.

This of course poses certain risks, but to date I don't think anyone has had any problems since Nintendo has been taking measures to prevent the Homebrew Channel from being installed. So basically, it either works fine, or not at all. I have yet to see the HBC pose any real risk or hear of it causing problems.

And that's just scratching the surface. There are custom IOS modifications that can allow you to run backups, play actual DVDs, change your system menu themes, and a plethora of other things that could potentially cause problems if not used with caution.

Preloader (I mentioned it in an above comment) works by renaming the system menu and installing itself in its place. When SM4.0 was released, there were some problems that would cause your Wii to report that it was bricked. This has since been fixed, and I don't think the Wii homebrew communtiy worried about it too much because the problem was a known issue and has since been fixed.

And don't get me started on pirate WAD installations that let you install virtual console and WiiWare titles for free. What I'm getting at is that it's painfully obvious when a Wii has been modified. The current IOS is v60, and a lot of IOS mods install to IOS v249 or 247. One look at your Wii's NAND will tell the tale.