Nintendo is seeking $4.5m in damages against a reddit moderator the company has accused of pirating its games.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this month with the US District Court for the Western District of Washington (thanks OatmealDome), and according to a document, Nintendo is accusing James Williams (known as “Archbox”) of piracy having “facilitated a network of unauthorised ‘shops’…that have offered to the public extensive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games for download.”
Nintendo has accused Williams of copying and distributing its games, as well as actively promoting their distribution as a moderator on the SwitchPirates reddit group.
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“Since 2019, Williams has been either directly or indirectly the owner, manager, operator, creator, administrator, supplier, and/or overseer of several online Pirate Shops, and has worked to actively promote these Pirate Shops to communities consisting of many thousands of individuals,” the document reads.
Williams has been “instrumental in the planning, development, functioning, and proliferation” of these shops, while further promoting the shops, soliciting donations, and offering “technical advice and encouragement” through his position as moderator on reddit.
Further, Nintendo claimed Williams was “directly involved in creating, promoting, and distributing the Circumvention Software to facilitate widespread use of the Pirate Shops”.
Ahead of this lawsuit, Nintendo sent Williams a cease and desist letter back in March 2024. In response, Williams acknowledged his conduct violated Nintendo of America’s rights and “stated that he would work with NOA to satisfy its demands”. However, Nintendo claimed he did not agree to cease his conduct and denied involvement with the piracy shops.
“When NOA requested that Defendant confirm in writing that he would comply with NOA’s demands, he became combative and uncooperative,” said Nintendo.
Since then, some of the piracy shops (or their content) have become inaccessible, while Williams is also accused of deleting or hiding evidence relevant to Nintendo’s claims (such as social media posts).
Nintendo sent Williams a final opportunity to comply in May 2024, to which he stated an attorney would be in contact with Nintendo. However, “NOA never received any such outreach, and its efforts to contact Defendant’s purported counsel were ignored,” the document reads.
As a result, Nintendo has requested a default judgement be granted against Williams, along with damages of $4.5m due to a number of violations including copyright infringement, trafficking in circumvention devices, and breach of contract.
“Here, the amount of money sufficient to remedy NOA’s injury would be extremely difficult to quantify; but it is indisputable that such amount would be large,” the document reads. “Therefore, the money at stake by this Motion is nowhere near an amount that would compensate NOA for the seriousness of Defendants’ conduct.”
This lawsuit is the latest in Nintendo’s ongoing actions against piracy.
Back in March, Nintendo claimed its victory over French file-sharing company Dstorage was “significant…for the entire games industry”. Then, in July, the FBI seized a number of ROM piracy sites it claimed had seen cumulative downloads of 3.2m in just three months, representing “an estimated loss of $170m.