A novel lawsuit revealed that Nintendo tracked down the alleged Switch pirate using Reddit posts and repair requests.
As reported Game fileNintendo has sued James “Archbox” Williams of Surprise, Arizona for allegedly violating its digital copyrights by selling pirated copies of Switch games.
The lawsuit says Nintendo hired the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp to investigate online pirated video game stores and found a user called Archbox that it linked to Arizona. He then noticed a Reddit user named Archbox (Archbox was a moderator of r/SwitchPirates). Based on their posts, the law firm was able to identify Archbox as James Williams. It turns out Williams had various Nintendo accounts associated with email addresses that were associated with repair orders.
Yes, Williams, the alleged Switch pirate, actually placed two repair orders with Nintendo linked to Surprise’s shipping address in Arizona.
As expected, there were discontinuations – one of which occurred just two days after Nintendo sent him one of the repaired items. The pirate stores Archbox allegedly worked with included Jack-in-the-Shop, Turtle in the Shop and NekoDrive, which all closed after Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist order in March.
“Defendant became a leading (if not primary) moderator of the SwitchPirates Reddit community, which he helped grow to nearly 190,000 members,” Nintendo’s initial complaint reads, as reported by the site Torrent maniac. “Since 2019, the defendant has posted thousands of comments and messages to the SwitchPirates Reddit group.
Nintendo has now entered a default judgment in its favor after Williams failed to timely present his case in court.
Photo: AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images.
Wesley is the UK news editor at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. Wesley can be reached at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
