A number of Nintendo Switch 2 owners apparently got a rude surprise this weekend when they discovered their consoles were restricted from using online services by Nintendo for no discernible reason. The home of Mario and Zelda has now reportedly responded, fixing the issue and saying it was a due to an internal server problem.
Upon boot-up, the impacted owners would get an error code which “indicates that the Nintendo Switch 2 or Nintendo Switch console you are using has been permanently banned from connecting to the internet due to a breach of user agreements.” Included in the possible reasons is “fraudulent or unauthorised transactions.”
As spotted by PC Guide, over on Reddit, players have been posting about being hit with this despite download and transaction histories that are extremely clean. Sadly, the ban hammer is hard to argue with, and there are limited channels for communicating that you’ve been wrongly restricted.
Nonetheless, the community managed to make enough noise – likely because there are plenty more affected than we know about – that Nintendo apparently looked into it and is now purportedly remedying the problem. In another post on Reddit, a player mentions calling up customer service twice, and the second time, the rep acknowledging there’d been a server-side problem, and that changes were being rolled out.
They then found the ban lifted upon restarting the console, and a number of other Switch 2 users are saying the same. Nintendo itself hasn’t commented publicly as of yet, making this more anecdotal than official at present, but it’s worth a try all the same.
At least we know the corporation’s defences are up if you start using illegitimate software. I’ve seen more graceful warnings, mind.