Nintendo has published a new system update for the Nintendo Switch, with some strange new details if a certain dataminer is to be believed.
As reported by Comic Book, Ver. 16.0.2 (Released April 17, 2023) comes with these patch notes:
“General system stability improvements to enhance the user’s experience.”
As is usually the case, no particular security breach or system issue occurred. The patch notes don’t indicate any major changes, to reassure owners that nothing serious needed fixing, and consequently, that no major improvements to the system are forthcoming.
However, dataminers often peek around these patches to find out what minute details are going on that Nintendo has opted not to share with the public.
OatmealDome has shared his findings:
“[Nintendo Switch Firmware Update]
Version 16.0.2 is now out.
The bad words list and the SSL module (handles establishing secure connections to servers) was updated.
The word “adhd” was added to the Japanese bad words list. No other languages were affected.
According to SwitchBrew contributors, one function in the SSL system module was modified to add a call to free().
This likely fixes a memory leak.
https://switchbrew.org/wiki/16.0.2#ssl
Note that the Switch OS has separate bad words list for each language.
When entering text via the keyboard, the OS will check the list for the language that your system is set to.
This change only affects Switch consoles which have their system language set to Japanese.”
So there’s some small details there to think about, isn’t there? First of all, the Japan language update will affect you, if you added a Japanese region account to your Nintendo Switch console.
That definitely isn’t everyone, but if you are someone who has a Switch Online subscription, that could be something you would benefit from. That’s because you can set it up so that you avail of that Switch Online subscription from your Japanese account. That means you can get the Japan-only games that were only released to Switch Online for that region.
So, why did Nintendo ban the word ADHD for Japanese region accounts? While communication systems are limited in the Nintendo Switch, that banned words list exists to curtail possible bullying , harassment, or other bad behavior between users.
There isn’t much known about the memory leak fix. It’s possible this is a pre-emptive move by Nintendo to plug a vulnerability they found. If you’re wondering how important this could be, you should know that The Last of Us Part 1 PC suffers from memory leak issues, among others.
