Smee should have stopped him.

Nintendo filed a lawsuit on May 11th against the owner of Queens-based NXPGAME, the company behind a website that gave its customers access to illegally copied DS and DSi software. Not that the Big N didn't give them a chance - after repeated communications between their legal department and the defendant, the crooks shut down their website, only to swiftly re-open an identical business at a different URL. NXPGAME even set up a redirect for old customers, and Nintendo's legal department, from their original website to the new one.

Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director of Anti-Piracy, commented:

Using game copiers to play unauthorized downloaded games is illegal and it’s wrong. Piracy is especially harmful to smaller developers. When their creative works are stolen and copied illegally, some companies find it difficult to survive economically.

Alex Neuse, CEO of Gaijin Games, developer of the WiiWare BIT.TRIP games, also chimed in:

I love gaming and I spent years of hard work and a significant personal financial investment to make my video game dream a reality. But I estimate that more than 70 percent of our games that are in the hands of the public have been copied illegally. Piracy especially hurts small independent developers who don’t command the sales figures/profits that the bigger companies do; and that ultimately hurts not only developers but all gamers.

This follows the 2009 suit Nintendo vs Chan, which established that copied software violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is illegal in the United States. You can learn more about Nintendo's campaign at their anti-piracy website.

[source businesswire.com]