Nintendo Sues ModdedHardware and Archbox for Piracy in US

According to TorrentFreak, Nintendo filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Seattle, Washington State, USA, accusing ModdedHardware and Archbox of modifying and shipping Switch game consoles installed with pirated games, and operating various pirated game stores.

ModdedHardware is mainly responsible for modifying Switch game consoles and is individually operated by Ryan Dlay. Nintendo contacted him in March and finally the two sides reached an agreement. Dlay agreed to stop the alleged illegal activities including selling cracked devices and modifying game consoles. However, ModdedHardware did not close, but still operated. Nintendo decided to directly sue him in June this year.

In a complaint submitted to the Federal Court in Seattle, Washington State, Nintendo accused ModdedHardware of infringing copyright and violating the DMCA through trafficking circumvention devices and other actions. These unauthorized activities have caused significant and irreparable damages to Nintendo. Nintendo demands an immediate halt to these activities and recovery of up to millions of dollars in losses.

Archbox, whose real name is James Williams, Nintendo accused him of being associated with several pirated game stores that sell unlicensed games.

Nintendo said in the complaint that the defendant (Williams) is the operator of several pirated game stores. Through these stores, he provided a large number of pirated Nintendo Switch games and was also suspected of helping people obtain and use cracking software so that they could play pirated games.

TapTechNews learned that Archbox is the moderator of the SwitchPirates sub-forum on Reddit, which has 190,000 members, and Williams was found to have posted or replied a large number of posts in this forum guiding others on how to play pirated games.