From Tom's Hardware: Nintendo of America just won a lawsuit against James Williams, who allegedly moderated the r/SwitchPirates subreddit and sold pirated Switch games online. According to Aftermath, the company sued Williams in June 2024 for copyright violations. However, they failed to respond even after several months, so the company asked for and received a default judgement in their favor.
The court is now directing Williams to pay $4.5 million to Nintendo of America for damages and shut down the pirated shops they control. “To effectuate this injunction, Williams shall immediately disable access to all online ‘shops’ that he operates or otherwise controls which have offered to the public extensive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games for download,” Washington court clerk Joshua C. Lewis and deputy clerk Natalie Wood said in the default judgement filing.
Williams was reportedly uncovered through an in-depth investigation by the company and its lawyers, which tracked them through their Archbox persona on Reddit. Nintendo then matched the details it found on the social media platform to its internal database and discovered that it was linked to a Nintendo account that had a handheld sent in for repairs. A few days after the unit was returned to Williams’ address, the company sent a cease-and-desist, to which the defendant allegedly replied via email.
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