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Someone recently showed me that he had used Action Replay to gain impossible stats for custom fighters in Super Smash Bros for 3DS. This prevented him from uploading characters to the Wii U version of the game (the Wii U said the data couldn't be imported because the game file was corrupted). Apparently people also use similar hacks to get impossibly strong weapons in Kid Icarus Uprising, and I imagine other games with online multiplayer and/or Streetpass capabilities are affected.

Can players who have hacked game files such as these Streetpass other players in those games? I'm concerned about getting corrupted data from such players via Streetpass.

Also, can hacked game files be used in online play? It's obviously unfair if this is possible. Is it determined by each game, or do Nintendo's servers check when you try to play online?

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    I'd assume the quality of any hack detection is on a per-game basis. As for hacked data through Streetpass, I'd assume if the data was 'corrupted' the system would reject it outright, and if not the game would - in either case Streetpass data does not tend to be required for game progression, and in fact, pending unclaimed streetpass rewards can be removed per-game from the system's notification screen.
    – Trent Hawkins
    Commented Aug 13, 2015 at 2:24

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It depends on the game and how much the developers have put effort in preventing it. For example, Pokemon has very strict restrictions when it comes to the Rated Battles (all Pokemon must be legitimate in terms of statistics and obtainment), but has next to none when it comes to random matchups and local multiplayer.

The problem lies in defining "hacked data" from the end of a game. For a game like Super Smash Bros this is relatively easy, because hacked stats are relatively easy to spot and prevent. On the other hand, there are games like Pokemon that can have teams that from a human viewpoint are obviously illegal (six shiny, 31 IV, teams for example) cannot be defined as illegal from a computer standpoint (because it's not IMPOSSIBLE to get those teams, it's just very, very unlikely). This makes it very hard for any system to be flawless.

As for Streetpass, this is again entirely dependent on the software. Animal Crossing: New Leaf for example offers no protection or checks against hacked streetpass houses.

Developers can protect against importing these files in the first place by creating checksums, but this is entirely up to the developer and these checksums can be broken.

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