Nintendo’s continued fight against Switch game piracy continues, as it’s now set its sights on a Nintendo Switch piracy subreddit which was recently highlighted in a lawsuit against an alleged pirate.
It was back in June (thanks, TorrentFreak) that Nintendo first filed a lawsuit against James Williams, also known as ‘Archbox.’ It alleged that he had “been involved in creating, operating, and promoting (and assisting others to create, operate, and promote) a network of unauthorized online ‘shops’ (nicknamed ‘freeshops’) which offer to the public extensive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games for download.” At the time, it called him “an active and prominent member of the Reddit community r/SwitchPirates,” and according to a new report from Game File, it sounds like the company is planning further investigation into the subreddit itself.
In a new court filing, it’s stated that an “extensive and diligent investigation into the operation, ownership, and control of the Pirate Shops, including efforts to determine the identity of Defendant Williams” previously took place, in which “we learned various details about the Pirate Shops and about Defendant’s involvement in them.” One of these things, it’s claimed, is that the “Defendant was the primary moderator of the ‘SwitchPirates’ Reddit community.” What’s more, it adds, “we also became aware of multiple other online actors who appeared to have a role in the Pirate Shops,” but it wasn’t able to identify or locate them at the time.
Nintendo paying Anton Chigurh to hunt you down for pirating Lego Horizon Adventures
It’s weird to call a library where anyone can get free games a “shop”
That comes from the source of the name (free-shop) that was a homebrew on the 3DS that mimicked the visual/ui of the official e-shop, so the naming is a bit of a pun.
capitalism will do that to you. even the maintainers call it that
Don’t do your illegal shit on Reddit and Discord
As far as I can recall a lot of post gamecube nintendo piracy seemed to hinge on downloading shit with directly with your jailbroken console either from a free shop or by fooling the actual nintendo servers into thinking you have licenses and either of those options always seemed to me indistinguishable from honeypots.
What ever happened to just torrenting the roms?
they’re 10-30% harder to find than direct downloads. internet archive usually has torrents but the interface and searching sucks
I’m curious if they’re ramping this up ahead of the Switch 2 given the backwards compatibility it’s supposed to have. Switch emulation isn’t new, but Nintendo has really been throwing lawsuits around the last year or two
that’s exactly what it is. historically though this just makes people more determined
I have also been thinking it has something to do with a new Switch. Maybe to try and scare people off from trying to get similar things going on the new console. Though we all know that lots of hackers will be trying to get hands on launch consoles since they tend to be the easiest to get working. I mean, at least it will make lots of money from development of the new console get made back faster for Nintendo.
i bought the old switch during the beginning of the pandemic… it was the first console i’ve ever bought in my life
my partner played animal crossing for a few months, i tried some zelda game and a tetris game for a short while. I bought all the karaoke games and we played through the song lists a time or two.
The thing has become more of a dust collector on the fireplace mantle than anything else. I’ll never buy another nintendo anything… the thing sucks, the games suck, and nintendo is evil as fuck.
the console was great tbh. I loved having a decent handheld gaming device but the closed nature plus the high price for games made me move to the Steamdeck in a heartbeat
i bought a steamdeck about a year later and its the only console i’ll ever want really
I think the Sony/Palworld lawsuit requires Nintendo to appear to police it’s IP and discourage others from creating a Nintendo-clone that would eat into their merchandise/franchises.
Nintendo are digging their own grave. The more overzealous they get about piracy, the more people are going to pirate their games.
Get a fucking clue Nintendo. They only just clawed their way out of the WiiU being a bomb and now they’re going to piss away any good will away with this piracy crap.
Typical corporate greed.
Spore’s ridiculously extreme anti-piracy measures lead it to being one of the most pirated games of it’s time
It’s a me, Legislatio
Nintendo has done a really good job at getting me to never buy anything from them again.
what a horrid little beast of a company
and yet they’re doing everything a capitalism winner does
Putting on my fedora and trenchcoat, strapping a katana underneath it and heading to Nintendo HQ to re-enact the “Don’t Fear the Reaper” ending from Cyberpunk 2077 (CW: graphic violence, mention of suicide, and also spoilers for 2077) except I piss myself and quietly return home before the building’s even in eyesight.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
“It’s MY IP to sit on and do nothing with!”
I think this is what pisses me off the most. If you own an IP you should have a requirement to make it available. If you don’t, you lose the copyright.
The point of copyright is to allow you the exclusive right to sell a product so you can make money off producing it. If you stop selling it, there’s no reason to protect that right anymore.
thing is it’s laughably easy to get pirated ROMs for the switch. I just search “[game] switch ROM” and navigate whatever weird site with adblocker to download whatever I need. no torrent needed!
