Hector Martin

Storytime: I did some pentesting and advising work for Nintendo after they approached me (via email, not stalking) in 2015. This was professional work on a freelance/consulting basis. That NDA has expired. I won't talk about project details but let's talk about how that went.

The people I worked with, including engineers and lawyers from all three main branches of Nintendo (NCL, NOA, NERD) were largely very nice people. Communication was formal. Sadly, the project was hampered by corporate policy, politics, and mistrust, as often happens.

I was able to accomplish some smaller goals, and give advice on direction, but I sadly wasn't able to have high impact because the environment didn't allow me to. This was, as usual, largely due to management, not the people I worked with directly.

The leaked documents show some of these same problems internal to Nintendo. They paint a story of a large multinational with communication, focus, and trust issues across cultures and teams, which is sadly common. (Read beyond the ninja docs, there's more)

Remember, corporations are made of people, and those people are often trying to do good. It's the corporate structure, and the people in specific (usually higher) positions that end up making things go wrong. So keep that in mind as you read through the leaked docs.

I mean, I've had a fair bit of experience with ethics in large corporate structures at this point, and I'm not sure it's that simple. You'll find a good chunk of people that just don't care about the impact of their actions as long as they get paid.

Group enough of these people under even a single leader with crooked intentions and who's fine twisting facts and you'll get an org of 100+ people working on evil stuff fulltime. Sometimes that can go on for years until someone outside notices and raises it as an issue.