Nintendo is not close to being done with its legal crackdown on Switch modders and others whom it accuses of fomenting piracy.

In a recent filing in federal court in Washington State, Nintendo of America (NOA) said its investigation of Switch modder James “Archbox” Williams has given it new targets. They include a SwitchPirates subreddit with some 200,000 members, Game File has learned.

Nintendo is now seeking an okay from the court to subpoena business records from internet domain companies Name Cheap, Go Daddy and Tucows, as well as Cloudflare, Github, Discord, Google, and Reddit to identify alleged associates of Williams.

Specific to Reddit, the company states:

Reddit, Inc. operates a social media platform where users, often using pseudonyms, may post to different forums known as communities or “subreddits.” Defendant was a primary moderator of the SwitchPirates community, under the name “Archbox,” which boasted more than 190,000 members. Nintendo has reason to believe that other accounts active in the SwitchPirates community may also have been controlled by Defendant, or else reflect other individuals who have worked alongside Defendant.

The company made clear that IDing such people will give them an open lane to sue: “The purpose of all of the requested subpoenas is to seek relevant information that is necessary for NOA to pursue infringement claims.”

Source and full material: Game File

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Well, I still love Nintendo games to this day. I grew up with a SNES, then I also enjoyed almost all of their other consoles... But to be honest to myself, I don't like the people behind the company.

I think, and I hope, that this backfires. But that's my opinion.

I hope it works, they every right to protect their ips and games. None of them are in public domain yet.

I love when multitrillion yen companies ruin ppls lives over pirating their $60 products!! Nintendo will surely never recover from these pirates' endeavor. :( Hopefully justice is served, and Nintendo is saved!

i get annoyed with the smugness and entitlement of most pirates online.  I don't actually care if they get them or not, but taking them down a peg would be amusing.

i don't like pirates, but $100,000 is the maximum fine I'd be willing to give. (Which, to put it into perspective, is two years worth of salary from the median U.S. adult. It'd be like suing Nintendo for two years worth of annual profit, which would really hurt business.) A multitrillion yen business should have no right to destroy somebody's livlihood. Period. Unless we're talking in the extreme case of somebody literally dropping a bomb on HQ...

1) Wtf? Jeez nintendo about to ruin 200,000 peoples lives.
    They (nintendo) are swimming in money, and most of these guys are likely near broke (if they're resorting to pirateing).


2) Why would you call your thingy "SwitchPirates" ? thats like double dog daring nintendo to do something.

I honestly think it shouldn't even be that high.
Pirateing isn't really theft.... its not like Nintendo has 1 less copy of said game, they are able to sell, after someone pirates it.
and often these people that do pirate games are like teens or near broke adults, that can't afford to buy games.

Everybody always have a knee-jerk reaction to everything Nintendo does, and this news is being no exception, so let's analyze what the statement is actually saying:

"Nintendo has reason to believe that other accounts active in the SwitchPirates community may also have been controlled by Defendant, or else reflect other individuals who have worked alongside Defendant."

We have no reason to believe they are going after people who pirate, as they have never done that, they are going after people who enables piracy of Switch games, as they have every right to do.

And they need to be taught that piracy is not all right.

It's always easy to say, "but they're swimming in money". Yet Nintendo can afford to go after piracy and in that way also help the smaller devs that do get hurt by piracy. Also signals towards 3rd party devs that they're product is 'safe' on the Switch.

It's not only teens or near broke adults. I knew many that made piracy a lifestyle, fully able to afford to simply spend the cash.

I pirated everything as a teen, didn't buy any games until I got a job in software development at a small company that did get hurt by piracy. We found out that our first route planning product for the Psion Series 3 was pirated, freely downloadable. Dunno how big of an impact it had, but we did have to close the UK office branch a few years later. The company got big later on by launching our own hardware product with fully copy protected software, encrypted map data linked to the hardware device ID.

Piracy won't hurt Nintendo directly, it does create a mindset of not paying for software which is damaging long term. And it does hurt indie developers.

Plus there is no excuse for it anymore. There are so many cheap games, ftp games and other cheap ways to play games nowadays you never have to resort to piracy because you simply 'need' to play games.

And what has piracy led to, draconian DRM, always online requirements. You're welcome, I was part of the problem leading to modern DRM.

So they see piracy as a threat. Legitimately. At least publicly. It's such a strange thing for them to be doing this as it does nothing for them. Except maybe give their lawyers some busy work.

Nintendo is really drinking it's own Kool-Aid.