Console Modding Becomes Illegal in Japan

The Country’s “Unfair Competition Prevention Act” Receives an Update

Japan unveiled the Unfair Competition Prevention Act back in December, and has already changed it to make the act of console modding and game saves illegal, with fines peaking at 5 million yen (about 61,000CAD) or 5 years of jail time.This change to the act doesn’t just cover changes to the consoles themselves, but also third party accessories such as Action Replay and other save editors – which will now be discontinued in the region.

There are three major offences that players caught doing can lead to the aforementioned punishments:

  • Distribution of game save data editors and programs
  • Distribution, selling, auctioning serial codes and product keys without the software maker’s permission
  • Services that offer the editing/hacking of save data, and/or console modding

Japan is now the first country to legislate the re-selling of game keys, and those caught doing so are not only subject to the punishments already outlined but will also need to pay a fine to the software maker. It will be interesting to see how this change affects the re-selling of keys on international markets as well, as there are several websites that offer this service, regardless of how the keys are obtained.

We know that Nintendo has been extremely active in pursuing console modders – recently we reported that a man in England who was arrested for selling modified Switch consoles, and there has been a case where a Super Famicom Mini modder was arrested in Japan before this legislation came into play.

prison feature

Ultimately, the changes outlined to the Unfair Competition Prevention Act are to do just that – discourage and prevent players from doing things that could give them an unfair advantage over other players.

It will be interesting to see if other regions begin to adopt similar legislation in the future. With the steep fines and potential jail time – do you believe that these changes will truly discourage players?

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