Super Smash Bros Glitch Bans Players For 136 Years

When a lot of people find themselves getting banned from an online game for some kind of unbecoming behavior, it's usually for a few hours, a few days... maybe even a week or two. Well, Nintendo has taken punishment to the next level in Super Smash Bros., dishing out multiple lifetime's worth of chastisement... due to a glitch.

Over on the Super Smash Bros. sub-Reddit, there's a public service announcement about the glitch that bans you from the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros., for up to 136 years.

If the whole thing seems kind of absurd that's because it is. But the post kind of lays out the law with the image below.

So even if you aren't actually caught cheating, you can still find yourself getting banned for up to 136 years.

If you do group or free-for-all battles you might get hit with the glitch and if you play online at all you might find yourself on the wrong side of Nintendo's glitched up law. Dangerous time to be a super smash brother.

Nevertheless, one of the top comments in the thread attempts to explain away the problem, breaking down the potential cause of the glitch being something in relation to a bugged integer. Reddit user rstevoa drops his guess into the fold, writing...

“Now, when a computer handles numbers, it has a limited amount that it can store. Since computers count using zeros and ones, the maximum number a computer can hold is weird. If you have signed numbers (negative or positive) then the computer can hold between -2147483648 and 2147483647. If you don't have signs, it can hold numbers between 0 and 4294967295 without you telling it to store bigger numbers.“One more thing: If you add one to the maximum number, it will wrap around to the minimum number because the ones and zeros used to measure it will overflow. Same happens backwards - if you subtract one from the minimum number, you'll get the maximum number (if you want me to elaborate I can).”

He definitely elaborates, breaking down that the wraparound could have happened and that the 136 years actually equates to a pretty close figure if there are no signs used, writing...

“Those players got banned for 71582700 minutes. That's 4294962000 seconds, which is darn close to 4294967295.”

That is pretty close.

The whole point of the ban was to enforce a “non-targeting” method of playing. For instance, if one player just keeps targeting and killing another certain player online, it will flag the first player for their consistent targeting of the second player. While this seems like the common goal of the game, somehow it appears to be Nintendo's way of cutting down on bullying, perhaps? I'm not entirely sure.

As most people pointed out in the thread, the whole point of the game is to target other players, so what exactly did they expect?

I'm sure there are plenty of players now completely freaked out about the possibility of playing online or even beating the crap out of other players in part of fearing being banned for 136 years.