Nintendo Offering Cash for Discovering 3DS Hacks

Are you a white-hat hacker? Are you a black-hat hacker who doesn’t mind selling out their compatriots? Are you someone with a basic knowledge of code and a Nintendo 3DS? Then Nintendo’s got a job for you: if you’re able to identify some kind of security flaw in the 3DS, and tell them about it, you could earn upwards of 20,000 USD.

That’s a lot of cash. But it’s also the upper limit. You could also just get a quick 100 bucks and a joyless ‘thank you’, but hey, that ain’t bad at all.

Here’s how it works. Nintendo is now looking for any kind of bug or exploit that can be used to achieve the following ends:

• Piracy, including:
• Game application dumping
• Copied game application execution
• Cheating
• Game application modification
• Save data modification
• Dissemination of inappropriate content to children

If you find some kind of exploit or hack that lets people do this stuff, then get back to Nintendo using this form. Once Nintendo has identified your exploit/bug, they’ll determine how much they feel you owe. Given that we’re talking about Nintendo, a company so money-hungry they’ll even try to monetize their own fan’s videos, I’m not holding my breath on them being especially generous.

That said, while the money-making opportunities of this bounty program is debatable, what is more interesting is that it shows that Nintendo is still VERY interested in the health and sustainability of the Nintendo 3DS - which is a sort of additional confirmation that they might actually be serious when they say that the Switch and the 3DS will be separate products. After all, the hardware between the two are so different, it’s hard to imagine this is preemptive for their future mobile console.

So, that’s good news. Better news, if you can make a small fortune finding exploits in the system. Sucks about all those Pokemon Sun and Moon mods you know are comin’ along, though.