Nintendo of America was awarded $4.5 million in damages in its lawsuit against a Reddit moderator who allegedly sold pirated Nintendo Switch games. Nintendo sued James Williams, who goes by Archbox online, in June 2024 for violating its copyrights. The court will also force Williams to close the online shops in which he distributes pirated games. Nintendo’s win was a default judgement, which means that Williams did not respond to the lawsuit in court. Therefore, Nintendo won the amount it had asked for in its October 2025 filings seeking a default judgment.
I got no sympathy for people who sell pirated games, though. Selling mod chips or selling modded Switches is one thing. It’s a service many people can’t do. A Switch has to be opened and soldered, though IIRC the OG was easier to do, but has since been patched. Compare this with the 3DS that anyone can jailbreak in minutes. But selling pirated Switch ROM dumps that they probably didn’t even dump themselves? Or even if they did. If I’m gonna pay, my money’s going to go to the people who made the game… not a bloody Reddit moderator.
Yeah that seems proportional to the damage in lost sales. Fucking sure.
For real, was he a millionaire through online pirated sales? At most he probably cracked 5 digits.
I’m trying to picture the biggest operation possible with multiple storefronts and a breaking bad level assembly line. They’re saying the amount that he cost them if he was doing all that is more that Nintendo of America makes in a year.
Don’t know why I’m trying to visualize it. It’s obvious what’s going on
