Nintendo Wins $2 Million In Lawsuit Against Switch Piracy Hack Store

Bad vs. Worse.

(Nintendo are the latter)

@Noid why do you believe that?

Here with my popcorn for the Nintendolife morale warriors and legal experts to cast their eye over the details and furnish us with their glee and joy.

Honestly, of the suits they currently are engaged in, this was probably the one they shouldn't have won. This sets a bad precedent even for legit consumers.

Can i also get 2 million for joycon drifts?

@SirAileron Do you have any clue about what would happen if Nintendo LOST this?

Lawsuit for joycon issues??? My latest joycon is now dancing so bad that i smashed it out of annoyance.

I'm against piracy, so fine with this. Happy for Nintendo too, they can start saving up for their "Nintendo put the 'con' in joycon" lawsuit. Lots of reasons to be happy.

In the end, pirates always lose.

Can they use that money to improve their online service?

If they are looking for more people to sue they should just look an here.

I'm glad Nintendo won this. Piracy is theft.

Those $2 million smackeroo should be enough for them to make the new Switch Pro console.

@Retro_Player_77 $2 million is about the budget of three brand new Pokemon games, so they're good for now.

good . . . . . very good

@Retro_Player_77 They'll need that 2 million for all the joycon lawsuits there up against.

@0L1V14 Out of 3 PS4 controllers that i own, one started drifting slightly after over a year. All of them were bought used.

Out of 4 Joycons i bought, 4 of them started drifting within months and so did their replacement joysticks. All of those Joy-Cons and Joy-sticks were bought new.

I'm really tired of people saying other controllers drift as well. It's an exception on those, while for Joy-Cons it is the norm.

Why is Mario dressed like a pirate in this article about piracy...

I too am glad Nintendo won this one; if I were in their shoes and selling my IP's and some jerk out there was pirating my stuff for their financial gain then I too would have reservations with this.

Home taping is killing the music industry!!! Oh, wait, wrong decade.
We were here earlier this week on a GTA3 article praising it as “magic” and now we are here saying it’s messing around with Nintendo’s property.
I get it’s different views from different authors- maybe we could get a face off of the two positions in the form of an article?

@sanderev Well that’s not strictly true is it, one is taken down but there will be many others waiting in the wings to carry on

Serious question: do you all think that store made that much money while being active, or are the 2 million a personal bankrupt for lifetime?

It's just that I would have never quessed that they could make so much money of off it.

Guess I am naive.

yikes i have no issue with hacking, as long as you're not dense enough to profit out of something...you bought - that is rightfully yours, can do whatever the hell you want with it, of course, that's IF you are only selling a part you made yourself, not just take switch...t..that you bought yourself with your own money to sell to the public, man i am pretty sure -what he did wasn't illegal at this point?

I mean he owns the darn thing, unless he was selling the thingie to make your switch go into homebrew? if that's the case it still doesn't justify nintendo to sue them when they made the thing their own self....and the people who gave others access to homebrew games - downloadable isn't illegal when people buy it to give to others..- does this mean that if i resold a nintendo switch that was hacked by a person - i would get into trouble???..i am super confused on how this is bad, anyway i am still going to be waiting for Nintendo to actually do something about the major back lash on the joycon drift real problem they got lmao, i feel like they sue these people because they needed the money,,...even though there a multibillionare company that can get the money back easily especially around the christmas year..i.-...

..lol..but i do love nintendo just not new nintendo, so if they lose the joycon drift lawsuit i will be popping out my bottle of wine :3, and drink. although it sucks, but you shouldn't have made cheap joycons to "save money" instead you should've made a product that works....ugh.

listen as long as you not doing anything that is against the law, you are fine but if you are, then you reap what you sow.

“Team-Xecuter, the creators of the tools being sold,” “believing they have the right to mess around with Nintendo's property.”

Yes, you can mess around with your own Nintendo property all you like. Just do it privately, in the comfort of your home and don’t distribute or sell cracking software online. Stupid pirate morons.

Get lost Nintendo 🙄

@Milenko I can’t remember much from that article. Was the game file completely unchanged? I get that the home brew app/ emulator is home brew, but I thought you’d have to change the game file in some way to make it play?

@StefanN I've bought 2 Joy-Con with my day one Switch, none of them drift.

@Kid_Sickarus That article also raised the question wether Rockstar Games will interfere with it as it is their property. There's also a difference between offering these games "for free" and porting your PC copy of GTA to the Switch. If the latter not only ported his copy but made the Switch port available for free, it would be an issue.

I don't care if some people try to make up excuses for piracy like "it's to preserve old games" and "a few pirated games don't do any harm". It's theft plain and simple. You want to get paid for the work you do and so do the developers of these games.

@StefanN I went thru 6 different Ps4 controllers with the drift issue and 2 of my friends went thru the same thing. Out of my 4 Joy Cons I've only had to fix one of them and Nintendo was super fast at getting it fixed. I'm not saying Joy cons are perfect but if PS4 controllers are just an exception then me and my friends must have really bad luck. The problem is fixed for now tho I switch to Xbox lol

Do what you want to your own system in private but the second you start profiting off of tools to hack and potentially pirate software then you stepped over that line.

@MajinSoul you said there’s a difference between one person doing it on their own device (which, as you say, the article acknowledges that Rockstar may consider piracy) but then you go on to say there’s no excuse and it’s theft plain and simple.
I’m just saying there’s nuance here I would enjoy seeing explored.

@0L1V14 i had to replace my joycons 3 times when i had a normal switch because they all drifted and replacing them was less challenging than facing nintendo on the phone, since basically their costumer support is non existent.

Meanwhile out of my 5 ps4 controllers only one drifted 3 years later while the other ones were still working like new.

Que choisir in france did a global europ study proving at least 65% of the european joycons are deffective from drifting. So it deffinitely is a huge problem with nintendo and i'm tired of people like you that prentend it's ok because it's nintendo

@Kid_Sickarus I'm saying it is one person doing it on their own device with a PAID copy of the game without distributing it to others. That is a big difference.

Mario is a pirate. Mario was born from piracy

@MajinSoul which, as you say, the article acknowledges that Rockstar may consider piracy. Playing a duplicate of a game on a platform for which you do not have a license to play it. not such a difference.

Yessss, love it. 2 million should be enough to discourage others

I am really fed up with all those immature people that blame Nintendo and not the hackers that are
plainly common thieves. Whoever stands for these hackers is an idiot.
(ps: NintendoLife writers should also stop writing those hackers, dataminers etc. etc. articles as well and concentrate on writing real video games news.)

@Rpg-lover I had bad drift but I sprayed contact cleaner in the joystick and it fixed it immediately. If u haven't tried it, do this coz I was about to buy new ones then this fixed it. All the best

I love seeing the pirate Mario pic for these types of articles.

I seriously doubt they made $2 million selling these tools but it could be symbolic with the company filing bankruptcy and it all disappears.

@Brookie thanks so much for the tips.

You can download all the roms you want and jailbreak your consoles, just don't try making money from it. I'm against any type of piracy that messes with a product you can legally own right now and can be enjoyed more fully on its own platform. But everything else goes

Good. Nintendo should defend their products.

That last line and some of these comments..... SMDH

I am baffled by the comments saying Nintendo is bad for protecting their product. Jailbreaking the Switch means money lost for ALL the developers and publishers.

This is a great news and sets a good precedent for the video game industry. Hopefully this will convince other groups to stop their business that damages the industry.

No probs... Just tilt the stick to one side and use a paperclip to open up the rubber at the bottom of the stick just enuf to squirt some spray in. Buy contact cleaner that has a straw to put in the nozzle so u can direct it better without it going everywhere. There's a clip on YouTube 👍

@Rpg-lover Sooooo, WAS dancing then? Lol. I feel ya.

The article is way too vague about what the chips actually do to make an informed opinion...

@NintndoNik It is YOUR hardware when you buy it though and you can do anything you want with it. If they were advertising piracy on their site then I can see an issue but if not that is a poor move on Nintendo's part. The vast majority of people buy their games anyways.

The problem in my mind is that hacked tools offer more potential than piracy, although that's all anyone ever thinks of for game consoles.

When someone removes their OS from a computer and adds Linux, the computer is modified, but the intention isn't to steal.

Piracy is awful/stealing. I agree with the other commenters there.
But, for example, modding Skyrim (for Switch, obviously) can only be done on hacked switches.

Nintendo has locked down their system so tightly because of fear of piracy, that they've shut down other fun things that could be a threat, but aren't inherently so.

Before anyone goes accusing, I haven't hacked my system. I have way too many purchased downloaded games, so I can't afford to get bricked in an update.

Still, I'd pay Nintendo double the switch's worth to play modded skyrim in the palms of my hand.

And so it should be.

Here's the thing on Joy-Con drifters cases...

1. Documentation-have none No Case
2. Provide evidence/receipts of repairs - Null your case if you had repairs
3. Repairs being done by Nintendo can also dimiss the case. Those for money will loose out.

And I said many times if you got no Paper trials or Documentation to backup the claims it is listed at User Abuse under the EULA. So if you want a judgement you better Document all the problems and repairs if they failed or didn't work. Otherwise it will not hold up in a court of law.

People used to say the Switch was the best portable emulation and RetroArch machine, better than an Android phone, etc. But that's not true anymore, as Nintendo are really clamping down on all Switch homebrew activity.

This pleases me greatly.

A well-placed middle finger to all pirates, I love it.

@Noid dumb, get some life experience

Gosh dammit nintendo. Oh well I still play all your past games for free

@MidnightLaces Look in short you own the switch or device you bought, you don't own the right to sell it as profit because you don't own the franchise, same goes for games. Make what you want, but technically you don't own the franchise, you're buying permission to use it, same goes for movies, believe it or not, is illegal to show a movie you bought outside from those inside your home or charge others to view, movie is yours and yours alone. Does that make sense??? Yeah you own it but it is yours , can't do much since youre not buying the brand or the franchise. Been like that since day one, just gotta read the fine print and those long winded term and services we all ignore but ignorantly agree too. =:3

@Piyo Sure, but Nintendo has every right to it, it is theirs, we can act as entitled all we want but this games and franchises belong to Nintendo. We are just paying to enjoy the ride, you wouldn't like it if someone stole your hard work and did what ever they want with it would you??? Don't just talk like a consumer put yourself in the shoes of every hardworking developer, modeler, programer, animator , ect. ect. Their is really a lot we all ignorantly ignore just for our benefit as consumers =:3

From Nintendo's standpoint, why wouldn't they do this?? It's lost money from them AND any third party game. And before we condemn Nintendo for this, Sony did the same thing a while back.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-sues-hacker-for-selling-jailbroken-ps4s-on-ebay

Some folks really need to gain some perspective on this.

The Anti-Piracy moral crusaders came out of the woodwork again.

@Leej07 It's not about morals, you poor penniless pirate. Its about being glad that a company that was profiting from an open source code that was supposed to be free as if they had ownership of it, went down in flames.

I've never actually pirated anything except a few roms of extremely old and out of print NES and SNES games, but anyway.

Don't be a pirate, it's stealing.

@Stocksy My thoughts exactly. I brought soda.

@Rhaoulos That is completely false. Pirating software hurts publishers and developers. If I hack my Switch and only use it for Remote Play on my PS4 web I'm hurting no one. What you do after your jailbreak/hack a device determines what is illegal.

@Rhaoulos I know, it's really odd. Do Nintendo fans not support Nintendo?

I can't believe I have to spell this out again, but here we go:
Pirating BOTW or Splatoon 2 or any other currently available modern game is definitely stealing and wrong. Don't do it.
Pirating ROMs of 30 year old NES games that haven't been re-released in 30 years, and never will be re-released, and cost hundreds of dollars on eBay, (or The Thousand-Year Door, because damn, that game is getting crazy expensive) while technically still "stealing" quite literally does not matter and you should not care, so stop being the morality police about it.
Get a life.

HAHAHAHA Go Nintendo!

@jobvd the same thing that happened when they lost these cases with the DS all over Europe regarding flash carts: absolutely nothing bad happened to Nintendo. You seem to think they are some frail little independent business, and not the megalithic super corporation that makes so much money that it literally doesn't have to do anything outside of make video games and consoles in order to succeed financially.

Valve already did comprehensive studies on piracy, and how much business actually gets affected by piracy, including discovering the primary factors that drive piracy.

Since you are likely not a pirate, strange as the claim may seem, you simply have no right to talk about the morality of what pirates do, nor the impact of it. Even the most pirated Nintendo game of all time (Super Mario Galaxy 2) was a massive commercial success, and Nintendo actually lost a grand total of $0 in sales, because as the Valve studies proved, people buy games they really like if they can afford them, and a pirated game typically has a less than .001% chance of having swayed a paying customer into not paying.

Chances are, most people on this site were never aware that such a study on piracy was even conducted, by a major developer, publisher, and game distribution platform no less. They made their results public and wrote an article on the implications of it, which is also the direct result of why Steam has steep discount sales so frequently. Most people are poor, dude.

F you nintendo we still dift have jocon, the heck Sorry my word are g now driftin fix th better go at.

@SirAileron there may be truth to this in the climate at the time of those studies for that specific company, but the nature of data and economies does not necessarily mean it will remain true if businesses like Nintendo always lose these cases. If intellectual property laws become weak or unenforceable, it's a very real possibility with plenty of precedent that many businesses of all sizes (not just big corporations) can suffer severe losses to pirates or more likely just bigger businesses who will steal your ideas and push you out of your own market.

Patent laws can be overly restrictive in many cases, but when it comes to non-essential goods, it's best to keep piracy at a minimum.

@JohnnyC I am against piracy as well. I don't fully agree with Nintendo on this i do agree they have full rights to stop the switch hacking.
If the switch was a legacy console like the Wii or PS3 at this point then I could see a reason for people to be upset, but as it is a current ongoing system leaving the hacking community be would be very bad for their business.

@0L1V14 Quite frankly I find the whole drift issue lawsuit to be quite annoying lol. Have had a switch from day one and still have not encountered a drift issue with my joycon ( though may have just been lucky).
A person did try to sue Microsoft for a controller drift with the 2nd gen ultimate controller or whatever it was called again lol. Don't know how the case ended ( or if it is still ongoing), but I feel the person shot their own case in the foot as part of their argument included third parties which the thesis for their argument was Microsoft trying to drain money from customers with constant controllers breaking down or something to that effect.

@Yanina I don't think they made that much. Just nintendo trying to set a point like they did with the ROM community.

@MidnightLaces It's a Grey area lol. On one hand they are breaking the law by nullifying the TOS and going into the Switches code and then selling tools to others to also break the TOS. On the other hand it could be seen like Emulators which are supposed to be more for educational and homebrewing purposes. Sadly most people would use hacked devices to pirate rather then homered or legit copy.

That is why hackers usually state on their software they don't condone piracy and the intended use is just for digital backups.

@SirAileron you assume a lot about me.

This sucks, but I have never cared for how TX charges people to use their CFW.

@GumbyX84 "completely false" you say? So you are telling me 100% of people hacking their Switch is purely for remote play and experimenting? Don't make me laugh, you know very well the vast majority only hack consoles to get free software.

@Ashunera84 That's a valid counterargument. It's definitely important for any business to protect their intellectual property, and I'm not necessarily faulting Nintendo for engaging in that practice. And while the data from Valve's study may ceetainly be representative of somewhere around 2010, I can't really say the economic conditions regarding their results became any better regarding actual sales vs pirated sales and discounted sales. In several large major game consuming countries, the average person has only gotten poorer, and in light of that, overly aggressive protection of your own product means fewer people may have a chance of being invested in the branding, especially when the prices of everything have only gone up. Case in point, Pokemon games were never $60 prior to being on the Switch, and a number of fans would eventually try to get both versions. While that's a luxury, it has become less accessible now that it's a $120 USD entry point compared to an $80 one, and then you add the DLC on top of that, with it being per-title, which is what, an additional $40 at that point? Literally double what the same thing used to cost the consumer. Combine that with the Digital Tax that Nintendo enforces by refusing to lower the price of digital releases to match the lower cost of distributing them (something both Sony and Microsoft have exercised since the PS3/360 days), and it all adds up to a lot of extra money hand over fist that Nintendo siphons from its fans on a massive scale.

I may love the products that Nintendo produces, but as a company? They're anti-consumer to a sadistic degree. Defintiely far more than the average person might realize. Like, protect your stuff, sure, but please be kinder to your fans. I can't manage any sympathy for such a large company, especially when it's compared against the troubles of the average person.

@SirAileron Great posts, thanks.

@Rpg-lover JOYCON FOR SMASH CONFIRMED!!!

@Deliesh 😁😁😁😁...

"believing they have the right to mess around with Nintendo's property"

Once a switch is sold its no longer Nintendo property dude. The company makes hardware mods. You need a physical unit to use their products. No one is messing with anyone's property other than their own. If you pay for something, you own it. That's how it works. If you want to run Android or Linux you should have every legal right. Imagine buying a computer but only allowed to run what Microsoft or Apple approve of...

Piracy is the only way to ensure longevity in an industry where products can simply vanish forever. Props to these guys, and keep doing what they're doing.

Good. Hacking your own system is fine. Trying to make a profit off of pirating, that's a big no-no. Burn it all down.

@CommanderTaco it's not a grey area at all, -black and white. these people, unfortunately, got arrested, by the way, they didn't break * any* law, they have every right to mod the switch, and resell it - heck it's honestly making nintendo profit thanks to people like this. it's a constitutional right to own something, mod it however you want to - they didn't do anything illegal because of the fact that they made the modded hardware themselves. edit : so i found out that these people shot themselves in the foot because they got a bloated head due to the fact they thought they could be smart on adding a copyright law on their stuff......aahhhh..they shot themselves, you reap what you sow moment lmao

what nintendo did was incorrect, they shouldn't have sued those people but new nintendo power-hungry asf. you got a point there on them stating that they don't condone piracy because it's true, i rather get homebrew stuff than getting stuff in an illegal way.

edit: i found a great quote that i need to rephrase here " like taking down poor resellers will do something against a chip thats all over ebay and etc. " - sadly true lol.

@Rhaoulos I never said that. I said they are not one on the same. Jailbreaking can lead to pirating, but they are not mutually enclusive. If you can't accept that, that's your prerogative.

@sanderev Especially the baseball playing Pirates in Pittsburgh.

Well they simply broke the law so the right result occured

Congrats on the Streisand Effect! Never heard about Uberchips, Team-Xecutor, or any of their products or services. I just made a purchase through one of the many, many third party sellers that still exist. I surely won't be the only one. But, sure, count it as a win 😆

@Piyo Yes and no, you don't have a right that's why the second you do, you void any warranty, on top of that you can't profit either from it. Nintendo is not gonna make a fuzz from one individual but a business relying on it is another story. =