Nintendo has successfully won $4.5 million in damages from a Reddit moderator who copied and distributed pirated Switch games, as well as the means to play them.
Last year Nintendo filed a document with the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, asking for a default judgement on James Williams, known online as Archbox, after he failed to respond to a lawsuit filed in 2024.
As reported by TorrentFreak, the court has now granted Nintendo‘s motion in full, awarding Nintendo the full $4.5 million.
US District Judge Lauren King made it clear that Williams was fully aware of the case and can’t claim ignorance of it, because he hired a lawyer at one point to object to a Google subpoena. The court order points out that Williams’ refusal to respond, despite being aware of the lawsuit, didn’t help his case.
Nintendo’s lawsuit claimed that Williams “long has been involved in creating, operating, supporting, and promoting a network of Pirate Shops which have offered to the public extensive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games for free download”.
“Since 2019, Williams has been either directly or indirectly the owner, manager, operator, creator, administrator, supplier, and/or overseer of several online Pirate Shops, and has worked to actively promote these Pirate Shops to communities consisting of many thousands of individuals,” it said.
Nintendo also stated that Williams was “a leading (if not primary) moderator” of the SwitchPirates Reddit group, which eventually grew to 190,000 members, claiming that he posted thousands of messages on the group page, including asking for “donations” of Nintendo eShop gift cards so he could buy more Switch games to pirate.
Nintendo cited 30 games in particular, requesting $150,000 damages for each
The complaint claimed that Williams operated, owned or administered at least four Pirate Shops (and was involved in numerous others), some of which offered ‘Pro’ tiers for donating eShop gift cards, which would in turn offer access to other games not publicly available.
It says that Williams was the “primary representative and only lead member” of Missing Dumps, an online community focused on receiving eShop gift cards to essentially fill the gaps in Pirate Shops by buying games that hadn’t yet been pirated.
The Copyright Act states that instead of calculating actual damages and profits owed, a copyright owner can instead as for an award of statutory damages of up to $30,000 per infringement, or $150,000 if it’s shown to be willful.
Nintendo claimed that Williams had “engaged in the infringing and unlawful reproduction and distribution of hundreds, or thousands of copyrighted Nintendo Switch Games”, but instead focused on just 30 key first-party titles that were distributed by Williams, asking for damages of $150,000 for each title, at a total of $4.5 million.
The judge agreed, stating that because lost sales could have easily run into hundreds of thousands of dollars for each game, the maximum damages request of $150,000 per game was “not an unrealistic estimate”.
As well as the $4.5 million in damages, the judge also issued a permanent injunction which prohibits Williams from distributing any pirated Nintendo game, or any software that circumvents copy protection. He’s also banned from encouraging others to download them.
