Being a company based in Japan, it should really be no surprise that Nintendo seems to only continue cracking down on alleged instances of their games being pirated overseas. Japan is known for being a country with incredibly strict anti-piracy laws, where downloading pirated content in Japan has a high likelihood of sending you to prison for up to two years or leaving you with up to a ¥2 million fine. This is surprisingly the lesser punishment of the two; however, uploading pirated content to the internet in Japan will have you serving up to ten years in prison or being left with a ¥10 million fine.
The trend of Nintendo’s lawsuit strike against modders and emulator developers largely began back in 2018, but it has continued strong into the present day, where we see a few lawsuits, but one in particular revolves around a single individual. This time, Nintendo is seeking $4.5 million in damages from one James “Archbox” Williams, an alleged “Pirate Shop” creator, operator, and promoter—as Nintendo puts it. Allegedly a moderator for the Switch Pirates subreddit as well as a similar operation by the name of MissingDumps, Williams is being accused of asking members to send in “donations” of Nintendo eShop gift cards, in exchange for the reward of more pirated Nintendo Switch content.
Nintendo claims that they contacted Williams in March 2024 to demand he shut down his Pirate Shops, with Williams allegedly acknowledging that his conduct “violated Nintendo of America’s rights,” stating he would “work with Nintendo of America to satisfy its demands.” Despite this, Nintendo has gone on the claim that Williams did not stop, and failed to agree to the terms of ceasing his conduct, rather denying his involvement with the Pirate Shops. Upon the court’s request that Williams confirm in writing his compliance with Nintendo’s demands, he became “combative and uncooperative”, later going on to delete all of his online presence. This then led Nintendo to the point we find them in today, as noted on Bluesky by the user OatmealDome, where Nintendo of America is looking for default judgment on Williams’ case due to his seeming disappearance after no word was heard from him or his attorney after his final chance to comply was passed up on May 17, 2024.
[Lawsuit]
Nintendo is requesting that a court award it $4,500,000 in damages from a Switch piracy Reddit moderator for operating multiple piracy sites.
The person refused to stop after Nintendo asked them to, which led to this lawsuit.
They also did not respond to the lawsuit.
— OatmealDome 🏳️🌈 (@oatmealdome.bsky.social) October 4, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Nintendo’s legal team ultimately arrived at the $4.5 million settlement thanks to the Copyright Act, which states that a copyright owner can seek $150,000 in damages per willful infringement, with Nintendo choosing to focus on the copyright infringement of thirty first-party games. These thirty games are among “hundreds or thousands” of alleged copies of pirated content that Nintendo claims are Williams’ doing.