Nintendo is, along with Sony, one of the companies that has suffered the most from piracy. Unlike Sony, Nintendo has never stopped pursuing those who have violated its copyright. While the other major Japanese company has always been much more lax, Nintendo has taken a very inquisitive position, sometimes bordering on legally questionable. Something that seems to have not changed over time, not even in the final stage of the life of Nintendo Switch.
Although piracy on the Switch has been around for years, it seems that Nintendo has decided to step up its game, especially now. Probably to set an example ahead of the release of its successor, still without an official name, which should be presented before the end of the current fiscal year. That’s why they have filed two new lawsuits, unrelated to each other: one against a major seller of chips to modify the console and another against the moderator of a large Reddit subforum.
The first one is Modded Hardware. A store that sells, among other things, flash carts and modified Switches, both with pre-installed pirated games. Nintendo spoke with the store owner last March, asking him to close his online store. He agreed, but a few months later, he reopened it. Nintendo, seeing that their request has been ignored, has decided to take legal action to prevent them from continuing to violate their hardware rights.
The second case is much more peculiar. That’s because the complaint has been made against Archbox, moderator of r/SwitchPiracy, the largest Nintendo Switch piracy subreddit on Reddit, with around 190,000 members. Nintendo alleges that, due to their position as a moderator, they have a public platform from which they have encouraged people to pirate Nintendo consoles and video games. Nintendo even claims that they have done so in private Telegram groups, according to the complaint.
Whether all of this will be clarified in court or even accepted for processing remains to be seen. As always in piracy matters, especially when they operate in such blurry territories like Archbox, what Nintendo seems to be aiming for is to intimidate rather than to win through legal means. They want to scare others and make them stop doing the same things that Archbox does, on the same or smaller scale. Whether this will work, remains to be seen. Although, if we’re being honest, none of these measures so far have ever prevented them from continuing to pirate their products.
