To fight against piracy, Nintendo goes to war against 200,000 people

After taking the Yuzu emulator offline at the start of the year, then Ryujinx a few weeks ago, Nintendo continues its crusade against Switch game piracy. This time, the company is pulling no punches since, as revealed in a document unearthed by the Game File site, it’s quite a sub-reddit which is now in the viewfinder.

In July 2024, the American branch of Nintendo launched hostilities against an Internet user known only under the nickname “Archbox”. A moderator and most active member of the “SwitchPirates” community on Reddit, the individual was accused of trading in his Switch hardware workarounds. Taking on the network head wasn’t enough for Nintendo of America, however.

Taking on an entire Reddit community

In a complaint presented to the American courts on November 22, 2024, the firm took Reddit to court, asking the site to reveal information on the members of the freshly decapitated community, which still has 200,000 registered members.

Not exactly satisfied with having brought down Archbox, Nintendo believes that “other active accounts in the SwitchPirates community may also have been run by the accused, or hide other individuals who worked alongside him ».

Anxious to identify all the workings of this rich community, the company nevertheless noted that “these subpoenas will be limited in scope“, seeking only to identify “account holders and sources of any payments made» as well as the “global traffic and access statistics» to the pirate sites in question. A beautiful treasure trove of data.

Big risks for pirates

Nintendo’s intentions in this war against piracy are beyond doubt, since they are marked in black and white in the document. “The purpose of these subpoenas is to seek relevant information that is necessary for Nintendo of America to pursue infringement actions.», notes the company. The complaint nevertheless specifies that “NOA does not seek to obtain this information for inappropriate purposes“. Phew.

To go further
Hacking Nintendo Switch games is going to get more and more complicated

The complaint also seeks access to information from Google, Discord, GitHub and other domain name registrars, once again proving the company’s aggressiveness in piracy cases and the associated risks. hacking Nintendo consoles. The SwitchPirates community has since scaled back, requiring validation from the moderation team for each new discussion topic.