Nintendo's Cracking Down Already On Splatoon 3

As one of the forefront properties available on Nintendo Switch, the "Splatoon" series will see its newest entry, "Splatoon 3," released on September 9. A follow-up to 2017's "Splatoon 2" — easily one of the best games released that year – "Splatoon 3" is one of the most highly anticipated games on the Nintendo Switch and is expected to deliver an ink-splattering experience that measures up to its highly lauded predecessors. However, while the release of "Splatoon 3" is only mere days away, it seems that some have already tried to get an unfair advantage ahead of the title's official release to the public.

As with any multiplayer game, guaranteeing a fair playing field is key to everyone having a good experience. For instance, when faced with a severe cheating problem, "Call of Duty: Vanguard" was fitted with anti-cheat software by Activision that would not only ban players from the game, but from the whole "Call of Duty" franchise. As it pertains to "Splatoon 3," it seems Nintendo is taking a similar approach and is cracking down on potential cheaters ahead of time.

Even though the game is still over a week away from a worldwide release, it seems that Nintendo has already implemented barriers that will prevent "Splatoon 3" players from gaining any kind of shortcut. And should any player be able to navigate around these barriers, there could be dire consequences.

As noted by dataminer OatmealDome on Twitter, Nintendo has already implemented anti-cheat technology for "Splatoon 3" to prevent any kind of third-party modification a player might try to underhandedly implement. Further, any recognized attempts at modifying "Splatoon 3" will be met with a console ban and possibly even a ban from all Nintendo network features. "Nintendo is beginning to issue console bans (possibly total ban from NSO?) to players who modified the game," OatmealDome said. The dataminer noted that they wouldn't get into specifics about how the process worked, since these systems work better when bad actors don't know what to look out for.

In a follow-up tweet, OatmealDome said that one modification in particular was allowing some players to gain early access to the game's test arena, and this has been the basis of several bans already. "Given how Splatoon 2 was also able to detect these patches, this is completely unsurprising," OatmealDome continued. "Not sure why people thought this was OK to try."