For many years now, Nintendo teams have been fighting against copyright problems, or even game piracy on their latest console, the Nintendo Switch. The hardware has become totally legendary, selling more than 140 million copies worldwide (data August 2024). Nintendo therefore does not tolerate web pirates, who try as best they can to go against the video game giant by offering illegal copies of the company's games. Recently, the studios initiated a vast procedure to fight against a colossal and illegal subreddit!
Nintendo goes to war against an illegal subReddit!
Nintendo's latest target is the Reddit subsite SwitchPiratesparticularly subreddit moderator James “Archbox” Williams. The company is taking this initiative following its lawsuit against the user and requesting more information from numerous companies like Reddit in order to identify people involved in so-called pirate stores on the site.
Nintendo says it has discovered that many other people are involved in the alleged hack and wants to identify them by accessing business records from Cloudflare, Discord, Github, Google and Reddit. This move aims to follow the closure of Modded Hardware, a site with which Archbox would have been associated. To do this, Nintendo requests access to information held on 200,000 subReddit membersin order to identify potential accomplices, or to identify third-party Archbox accounts.
An in-depth hunt
According to the complaint, the manufacturer of the Switch console became aware of various details regarding the pirate stores and the defendant's involvement in these online stores. Additionally, the accused Archbox failed to appear in court and thus, Nintendo is requesting a subpoena. An in-depth investigation into the sites mentioned above will aim to identify the account holders and sources of any payments made and, where applicable, the overall traffic and access statistics to the pirate store websites and to related online sites.
During our investigation, we also became aware of several other online actors who appeared to play a role in the pirate stores. However, we have not been able to determine the identity of the locations of these other actors with a sufficient degree of certainty to name them in the initial complaint.”
Nintendo of America
(Source)
Nintendo asks Google for access to Google Drive and Gmail data, but does not specifically indicate its intentions regarding Discord, eThe situation with Reddit is quite unclear. For studios, Nintendo “has reason to believe that other active accounts in the SwitchPirates community may also have been controlled by Defendant, or reflect other individuals who worked alongside Defendant”. For now, the investigation is still ongoing!
