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Smash Bros. Update Targets Matchmaking Exploit

The latest Super Smash Bros. Ultimate update (v13.0.5, released 2026-09-01) isn’t necessarily a signal of a Switch 2 version in the works. The fix is to stop an online cheat “avaru error” (img 1). The author of this cheat-blocking mod risked being banned to contact Nintendo about the exploit (img 2), leading to this update.

Excerpt from https://github.com/Atamol/ssbu-anti-jp-error/blob/main/README.en.md What is the avaru error? The avaru error (also called "SK error") is a cheat that abuses SSBU's online matchmaking, cutting the opponent's connection at matchmake time to trigger a long error. It's mostly seen on the Japanese servers. The name comes from the perpetrators using a real top player's in-game tag without permission (the player is uninvolved, and the scene knows this). How it works When you search for an opponent in quickplay or Elite Smash, NEX's matchmaking server assigns you to a session. A normal 1v1 gives max_participants=2, but cheaters use CFW to manipulate this process. 2/2 variant: In a 1v1 session, the PIA connection phase gets forced into an error by various means. 4/4 variant (full-room error): Even though it's 1v1, they create a max_participants=4 session. Several regular players get pulled into the same session, the game decides it's "full", and throws an error. Problems Switch's block function barely helps: Even after filling every block slot, cheaters spoof a lot of accounts with CFW, so they keep matching you from new ones Higher rank means more encounters: Cheaters usually inflate their rank with other one-sided setups (lag switching, stamina + FS meter Game & Watch, and so on), so at the top end you run into them over and over. It can leave you with only a few playable matches an hour Hard for Nintendo to catch: The NEX server returns every response as normal, so the error leaves no trace and the cheating looks invisible from the server side
X post by Atamoi@SSB https://x.com/Atamol_ssb/status/2095023301529940002 実はアカBanなど怒られるのを覚悟の上で，任天堂にチートの解析内容を報告し，やり取りを少し続けてました これまでのスマブラシリーズはすべてチートに屈して終わってしまった歴史があるということもあり，もし直ったなら，3か月間，諦めないで良かったと思う (X machine translation below) Actually, fully prepared to get my account banned or whatever backlash might come, I reported the cheat analysis details to Nintendo and kept up some correspondence with them for a bit. Given the history that all previous Smash Bros. series ended up succumbing to cheats, if it's fixed, then for those 3 months, I'll think it was worth not giving up.

[Originally posted on 2026-09-02 Pacific Time]