Nintendo pulls game “Freakyforms Deluxe” from 3DS eshop, mere hours after hack disclosed
A few hours ago, Hacker Plutoo released a method to hack the 3DS running on the latest firmware 11.0. The technique and tools rely on a vulnerability in 3DS game “Freakyforms Deluxe“. The game was available in both physical and digital formats… until a few minutes ago: Nintendo have now removed the digital version of the game from their eShop, according to Plutoo himself and other people from the hacking community.
People looking to hack their 3DS with this exploit will now have to get the game in physical format. I expect the prices at Amazon to skyrocket very soon. At the time of writing, this can be purchased for $22 on Amazon, and people report that you can find the game used on gamestop for $5. Note that when a similar exploit was found in game Cubic Ninja, Gamestop quickly increased the prices of the game from under $10 to prices closer to $40, according to some reports.
Bottom line is, people looking to get their hands on the exploitable game better do it quick.
Pic courtesy of ihaveamac on gbatemp
Interestingly, this hack works in “offline” mode, and this will probably make it harder for Nintendo to patch it the way they formerly patched the Cubic Ninja hack “ninjhax“. Their strategy back then consisted in preventing the game from getting online access. This strategy won’t work for an exploit that is 100% self contained. And it also seemed to only have slowed down progress on ninjhax anyway.
It’s also pretty unusual for Nintendo to react so fast an pull a game within hours. It had taken them a few days for the VVVVVV indie game to be removed from the eShop when an exploit was announced in it.
In the past, hackers have found out that the best way to announce such an exploit for the PS Vita was to announce it on a Friday evening: we found out that the people in charge of updating the games availability on the Sony PSN do not work on weekends, and we also saw with experiments that each PSN store is managed locally (in other words, if you’re releasing an exploit in a game on the JP store, announcing it on Friday evening Japanese time would make sense). 3DS hackers might want to use that kind trick moving forward, to buy their audience a bit more time…
Just ordered one from gamestop.
Game $4.99
Shipping $4.99
Tax $0.90
Total $10.88
🙂
I see. So Nintendo have taken a leaf out of Sony’s book and got more effective at pulling games from their store when exploits are announced, looks like they’re finally learning. I would say “good for them” but it’s more of an issue for the home-brew scene.
Personally I still think the best strategy is doing some research before buying a console. You’re looking for ones on eBay/Gumtree/Craigslist that haven’t been used in a while, you can usually tell from the description even if it’s short. Easy enough to ask the seller which version a console is running, they’re looking to shift it so in most cases you can ask, politely request NOT to do a firmware update if they haven’t already and they’re happy to do so. That way you can easily find a 3DS or Vita that has an exploitable version – in effect the best hack on Vita is failmail and the best on 3DS is browserhax. Little harder to do with, say, a PS3 if you want one on or below about 3.55 but not impossible. Depends on how much time and effort you’re willing to put in to find the hardware you want, and compared to how things were only a decade ago it’s become a LOT easier now the internet has such reach across a diverse group of people.
That’s my thoughts on the subject, anyway.
i guess it won’t work for NX, it’s very high chance Nintendo will be following M$’ draconian way of doing upgrade, yes dat win 10 forced upgrade.
They don’t care that much about their 3DS being homebrew’d; Super Mystery Dungeon and Ocarina of Time are still on the eShop, OoT having had been vulnerable for ages. They’d rather have their main titles stay up than other titles. Money is a higher priority than fixing.
Maybe they managed to remove it that fast since they are the owners of that IP, dunno how the whole process of having games in the eshop works, but I would expect them to easily remove a game they created
Damn, i should check this site daily…
I can’t do anything with the game (I’m already at 9.2), but it seems the best deal as of now is from Play-Asia, who is selling the game for $19.99 (with a slower $5 or faster $15 shipping).
Wow, Cubic Ninja is really easy to find these days, even if it’s $35 at Gamestop. Too bad that’s only useful for a small percentage of 3DSes out there now.
Why don’t u just use that browserhax? U could just updated ur firmware sometime ago to the latest version and do it…. I bought my N3DSXL last month and I use that to hack it for free.
I have three Cubic Ninja games which I don’t need or have ever used since purchase since I’m using a Gateway. Where should I sell them to get them sold quickly? The market in my country seems unfitting. I seem to jump on the hype train and buy stuff just when a hack is announced but then I really don’t use it that much. The exploiting part is the fun part really, not as much actually using the console.
today i use my sky3ds+ , and it could be use Freayhax to enter the homebrew . and it can play the 3DS game Freakyforms Deluxe
hope this can be help :
http://game4deal.blogspot.com/2016/06/how-to-use-sky3ds-plus-with-freayhax-on.html
i downloaded the game to play on my Sky3ds+ and the game and the exploit works 100% fine you just need to download blargsnes tho and follow the full tutorial on youtube on how to add the homebrew channel. i think nintendo is only dragging the games and hate the hack because if everyone has it they can get snes ganes for free instead of $10.90 each (australian) from the eshop