Wrong! "So in other words, no one is allowed to defend themselves from theft" is a what some may call a "strawman". If a country launches a missile into another country, that doesn't give the victim country the moral right to launch a nuke in retaliation. Analogously, I don't believe anybody should ever have their life ruined over a petty crime. It's insanity that this even need to explained. It is not justice for Nintendo to taking 20% of Gary Bowser's paycheck for the rest of his days, after having sent him to jail: This is a cruel punishment intended to serve as an example for others not to replicate his behavior, not "justice" for the victim.

Piracy (or any petty crime) should not recieve a near-death sentence. Why is this such a controversial statement? $1mil to the average person is 20y worth of the average American's paycheck.

Wrong! "So in other words, no one is allowed to defend themselves from theft" is a what some may call a "strawman". If a country launches a missile into another country, that doesn't give the victim country the moral right to launch a nuke in retaliation. Analogously, I don't believe anybody should ever have their life ruined over a petty crime. It's insanity that this even need to explained. It is not justice for Nintendo to taking 20% of Gary Bowser's paycheck for the rest of his days, after having sent him to jail: This is a cruel punishment intended to serve as an example for others not to replicate his behavior, not "justice" for the victim.

Piracy (or any petty crime) should not recieve a near-death sentence. Why is this such a controversial statement? $1mil to the average person is 20y worth of the average American's paycheck.

Til I learned that losing 20% of your paycheck is a near-death sentence.
Dunno how I'm still alive after losing 25% of mine to my mortgage.

You do know what Gary Bowser and the group he was part of actually did, right? He's not some misunderstood, unfairly punished saint. Causing console makers to cost an estimated $65 million in damages and making "tens of millions of dollars" in profit over their backs is definitely not petty crime material.

(i) "unfairly punished saint" Never said he was a "saint", my belief is mercy and rehabilitation is far better than vengence and punishment. In fact, an overwhelming consensus of researchers have reached the conclusion that mercy is far more effective in deterring crime than any punitive measures...so he could be a saint, or a devil. He should be treated with some level of mercy, as do all people. Everybody gets so fixated on serving justice for the victim...but why not to instigater? Why are they not worthy of sympathy?

(ii) You literally are just wrong about how much Gary got away with: It was around $320k over the seven years of operation. The business he was running accumulated millions, but Gary personally only recieve a few hundred thousand...which is not good. Of course it's not good, but why does he need to pay Nintendo $14mil in return for taking $300k? Nintendo is a massive company, and $300k is nothing to them. Not even $15mil is a lot to Nintendo, they literally accumulate billions in revenue each yeah.

Also, why should an individual be expected to pay off all the damages done to a massive corporation? It's like if a child broke a $1,000 vase, and the parents demanded $140,000 in response. This doesn't seem just to me. :/ There's a power imbalance here, so I feel it'd make the most sense in the punishment wasn't "an eye for an eye", but scaled so as to accomodate for this imbalance. Why am I wrong for thinking this?

While I understand where you are coming from, let me put it like this. If we are talking about say losing 20% of what you profited and that is only if you are caught and convicted then you, by stealing, you are looking at a guaranteed 80% to possibly 100% profit from someone else's work.  That sounds like incentive to me not a deterrent.

If anything maybe it should be an eye for an eye.  I will agree that 2 eyes for an eye (like your vase example) may be a bit much.

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.

What did I miss? Is Nintendo suing 200,000 Reddit users for $1 million each? $200 trillion lawsuit?

All I get from the source is that Nintendo is looking for accomplishes to James “Archbox” Williams by requesting info on aliases and other sites he has been active on. Nintendo goes after those profiting from piracy. They're not going after the avg Reddit user or sue people that have downloaded a ROM.

What's with all the hyperbole...

Nintendo shouldn't get access to what's probably personally identifiable information of 200,000 users just because some of them might be involved in illegal activities. That's a clear overreach in my opinion, because it's likely to violate the privacy of a very large number of innocent users as well. Privacy is valuable too. I skimmed through the filing, and while I'm not sure because it's legal jargon, my impression is that Nintendo has indeed not specified further anywhere which users it wants information about, so the chances are that it's all of them. I'm also not getting the impression that Nintendo is getting the authorities to investigate those users, I'm getting the impression that Nintendo itself wants the data of those users to investigate on its own. I don't think the users signed up for such distribution of data, and I don't think it's at all reasonable either. I think such gross violation of privacy demands a case much more serious than seeking out a small number of accomplishes among all those users.