Last Week’s Nintendo 3DS System Update 11.17.0-50 Patched Most Modern Exploits

Several months after the closure of the 3DS eShop, Nintendo has rolled out Nintendo 3DS system update 11.17.0-50, and from the looks of it, this new firmware version patches various exploits.

Nintendo closed the eShop for the Wii U and 3DS back in March of this year, but this hasn't prevented the company from releasing a new firmware version for its, still popular, discontinued handheld. The system software version 11.17.0-50e was rolled out last week, and while the official patch notes only mention system stability improvements and other adjustments, the homebrew community has found out that this new system update patches several exploits.

Apparently, after installing this new firmware version for the 3DS (as well as the 2DS, New Nintendo 3DS, and New Nintendo 2DS), most modern exploits don't seem to work. After having worked for more than a decade, almost all of the softmod exploits appear to have been patched with this new firmware version. As expected, the homebrew community isn't too happy with Nintendo's decision to release a new system update, especially since Nintendo didn't patch most of the exploits during the 3DS's lifecycle.

"I appreciate that Nintendo still cares about the 3DS and it hasn't been left in a dumpster fire like the Wii U, but seriously why are they still trying to patch mods?", a GBATemp user writes in a thread about this new 3DS system update.

"This is one of those moves so baffling only Nintendo could have made it", a Reddit user writes. "Why on earth would they release this after they made the decision to close the eShop and therefore stop making money off the console? The only thing I can think of is that they wanted to show third-party publishers they're still willing to crack down on piracy."

It will be interesting to see how the 3DS homebrew community will deal with this new system update going forward.

Nintendo originally released the 3DS in 2011 as the successor to the Nintendo DS. A larger model of the handheld, the 3DS XL, was released in 2012 alongside an entry-level version of the handheld, the Nintendo 2DS.  In 2014, Nintendo released the New Nintendo 3DS XL followed by the release of the New Nintendo 2DS XL in 2017. Nintendo discontinued all models in the 3DS family in 2020, after its successor, the Nintendo Switch, became a one-per-person system.

"Given that Switch is a home gaming system that can be taken on the go, this situation may change if it grows from being a one-per-household system to a one-per-person system", Nintendo said in 2018. "But the price of Switch is not something with which most parents would buy a system for every one of their children in a short period of time. Moving forward, we will work to ascertain what kinds of play people want at which price points, and as long as there is such demand, we will continue to sell the 3DS system. I see the product coexisting with Nintendo Switch at this point in time."

Written by Aernout van de Velde