Ouch! Nintendo Hacker Gary Bowser Hit With Additional $10 Million Fine

So that's where all the coins came from.

this punishment seems almost punitive.

So a president is a hacker? Confuse me once again.

When Dark Dowser in Fury Mode....

@ValZ yes, NoA president abuses his position and connections to hack consoles and abduct princesses.

Or something.

This is some pretty serious family issues. This would make a good series.

How about "Keeping Up with The Bowsers"?

Ouch? Just how much money did he make? No comical 'ouch' for him if he hacked so hard he can pay almost 15M in fines...

There goes legends! They will be missed.

im guessing fact he agreed 4.5 million now finede 10 million they madea lot of money im guessing not only from hacking nintendo

@ValZ It's Gary Bowser, not Doug. They share no relation except their name.

Lol what a silly amount of money. He'll never pay that and it'll come down hard on appeal

So much for it all being "legal scare tactics" from Nintendo.

Had to make an example out of someone.

Here's a crazy idea Nintendo - make your immensely profitable back catalogue available for humans to purchase legally and use an industrial strength poltergust to vacuum up all the money! If you don't make more than 15 million in a year I'll be very surprised, no need for expensive lawyers! Hacking in general is inevitable but only damaging if revenue streams are affected. Anything before Wii U or is no longer on sale is fair game as no harm is done.

So long Ga(r)y Bowser!

@Dr_Lugae they have the audacity to say that they are "unhappy" with Nintendo ... like what were they expecting to happen? Get a slap on the wrist? 🤦🏾

Huh did not expect selling roms to be that profitable that they accept paying 10 million without a lot of fuss.

@Kayvoo I'm thinkin' WiiU is safe to emulate now. About time to let it go. ZombiU may yet have its time.

@Damo Has their business actually been impacted? Despite piracy, switch games are selling just fine, in fact better than ever thanks to covid. I'm not pro piracy but it's not the huge threat most people think it is. It's much easier and safer to just buy a legit copy of the game. The average user isn't going to take time and go through the steps of hacking their switch.

@Dr_Lugae They are scare tactics though, no way in hell that he can pay 14.5 Million dollars (So most likely some other arrangement will be made behind the scenes), it's this high to scare off other people.

Hahahaha good I'm glad

The article thumbnails ya’ll use sometimes are absolutely hilarious 😂

Where are all these people called Bowser coming from?

@Abeedo maybe there just joking?

@Damo Piracy 100% impacts the video game business? As Frailbay30 was saying, the overall percentage of hackers amongst the entire user base is pretty small. And you think that every single game that they download illegally was a game they were actually going to purchase legitimately until they found this way to get them for free?

I agree that Nintendo should shut these places down, because no one should be getting these games for free. But I think to say that even 5% of piracy effects the video game business, let alone 100%, is extremely naive.

So Bowser sues Bowser for hacking Bowser game.

Bowser can always sell his castle to pay the fine. How much is Bowser’s castle worth?

The only liquid assets Bowser owns are Lava-based, the rest is tied up in property, or just tied up princesses.

@-wc- Well yeah, that's the whole point of "punishment."

Looks like Nintendo have made a lot of money off of piracy. Surely there's no way their losses amount to $15m because of Switch piracy.

@hakjie11
So basically it's Bowser's Inside Story.

Good i hate piracy, they have to pay

@Meteoroid The PSP had a horrible attach rate and it got to the point where many games, even ones from popular IPs simply were not selling at the numbers they should have.

This was because it was easy to hack a PSP and run retail games the day they came out.

Sony tried to play cat and mouse with these hackers and they always lost.

Anyone who says Piracy is not a big deal is living in a fantasy world. A pirated copy of a game represents a lost sale and when these start adding up, its can cost developers and publishers money.

This is what happened to many games on the PSP, especially when the system started to approach the end of its life.

People simply pirated the game and saw little motivation to go out and buy a copy either from a store or off PSN.

@Frailbay30
It is less about the piracy itself and more about the fact Team Xecutor made profit selling devices that allowed Switch to be hacked, which is a violation of copyright. If it wasn't for this minor detail the case wouldn't even stand in court.

TL;DR Never let greed take hold of you.

@Kayvoo They make more than that with NSO

Geez, the guy who hacked Sony got a job at least. This guy must be rollin' in it if 14.5 million is a wave of the hand to him.

And when someone does not have so much money even with all this hacking devices' profit, what can he do? What is happening in these situations like this? Will he working for Nintendo for his entire life as a slave?

"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."

I'd say this extends to suing people too, which Nintendo absolutely loves to do. They want to be the Disney of Video Games...and just as restrictive and brutal to their consumers.

Nothing wrong with "jail-breaking" technology!
He isn't at fault for what others chose to do with hacked systems!

@Madao
He wasn't selling ROMs

@Meteoroid I didn't know Team Xectuor was offering the ROMs themselves.
My understanding was they were offering the means for users to rip their own ROMs among other things.
(though I have heard their app is a little bit sketch, such as adding its own technical prevention measures)

Point is, I don't believe they're the ones ACTUALLY distributing the ROMs. They might be able to load ROMs, but those would be obtained by other means.
It's like saying that CD burner manufacturers were selling illegal music.

@Spider-Kev Exactly. If I buy a Switch I should be allowed to hack it. It's mine. If he invents a thing for modding Switches, I should be allowed to buy it, same as buying a screwdriver. It's only when I decide to use my hacked Switch to steal something that I've done anything immoral.

Sucks that the law apparently doesn't see it that way.

@Kevember Nah you can do really evil things that ruin people's lives without getting violent.

@Caryslan Did you know that bootleg DS game cards were also rampant on ebay even during its lifespan?
DS got bootlegged pretty quickly as well.

If PSP got a bad attach rate, it would be because Sony spent the first couple years trying to sell those UMD movies nobody wanted, then by the time they started promoting GAMES the DS had already built up a lead.
Then with the Vita Sony seemed to have made the same mistakes of barely marketing and then gave it up. Even I forget the Vita existed for some time after launch.

@Meteoroid Not really defending them (I hear they're a bit shady people otherwise, as said) but to say THEY give out ROMs sounds like an incorrect statement.

@Caryslan do I have to be the one to link the EU commission on piracy against the "lost game = lost sale" thing this time, the idea is literally one of the most widely debunked claims out there

@Meteoroid I mean we can do hypotheticals all the doo dah day here, but unless you're about to back this up with something like the ELSPA's claim on DS piracy (which has next to no corroboration/data) they will be just that

@Caryslan Yeah I remember when the R4 Card came out alongside the DS's biggest years on the market (where it was selling like 20-30million per year) Nintendo reported software sales falling by 50% in some regions.

Which is ridiculous considering massive console growth should always lead to software growth. Because you have new users buying software alongside current owners.

The only way it could have dropped that much instead of stalling is if existing users who were buying software just suddenly stopped.

Notice how all of the DS software to sell over 20million come from 2004-2006. Yet with a bigger userbase everything from 2007 onwards wasn't able to.

Or how the best sellers on the 3DS which sold half as well as the DS managed to sell around the same. With the 3DS Animal Crossing and Pokemon games managing to outsell Wild World and Black/White and Heart Hold/Soul Silver.

Imagine you could fine politicians that kind of penalty for all the lies and ***** they are doing. One can dream. This doesn't impress me. It's just a big corporation ripping someone a new one and making a few lawyers even richer. I guess he learned his lesson after the first few mill...

... but that's just me.

I like the picture

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/piracy-actually-increases-legitimate-sales-of-video-games-according-to-eu-commisions-report/

@Kayvoo selling switch consoles that are hacked are not old games that are not on sale tho. I will make no comment on weather piracy is morally correct for older games at this time

@Caryslan IIRC that was also an issue with the Dreamcast

If Bowser stuck with the games that weren't re-released, then Bowser wouldn't have sent his minions to go take down Bowser.

I have 2 things to say on this matter:

1. If the punishment for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class.

2. If I was hit with this ridiculous fine, I guarantee you I'll not be paying it.

Screw you Nintendo!

So long, Gary bowser!

@Frailbay30 That's not the point. They MUST protect their IPs from piracy so they won't have problems in the future to renew them or against other worse uses.

Maybe, yeah, they won't lose a lot of money, but if they let anybody to do whatever they want with their IPs for whatever reason, they won't have grounds to defend themselves from worst tactics or uses.

They have all the rights to defend their products and games. I don't understand why you "pseudo-Nintendo fans" can get that into your heads.

@nhSnork Lol

@Chlocean That's one game I really wish would've been put on the Switch.

@DK-Fan I think some only care only about getting their toy and have zero respect for the creators, only for the game.

It's easy to justify piracy when you act like Nintendo is just a faceless corporation withholding games. When really it's also a group of people that dedicated themselves to making them.

get reck'd ya pirate, you deserved this.

@DK-Fan First off, I'm not a Nintendo fan in any form. Secondly I never claimed Nintendo didn't have a right to defend their products. I just pointed out despite piracy their sells have not been impacted at all. I evens stated I wasn't for piracy. Maybe stop being a loyal vacuum?

@Frailbay30 Piracy sure as hell impacted software sells with the PSP when that was allowed to be run rampant to the appoint that several developers blamed piracy on the system for far below projected sales as they should with how easy it was to obtain “free” SW for current releases at the time

I don’t blame Nintendo for not waiting around passively and letting that happen to them at any given opportunity

@Meteoroid I read a message telling me piracy is what killed the PSP.
I really don't care about Xecutor.

But to be honest, even moreso as stuff goes digital, we do need SOMEONE to be copying this stuff, since decades from now the eShop will surely have been closed and then we'll be left only with the "ROMs". Like WiiWare.
But what good people should be doing is buying stuff while it IS available. It may be a shock then to learn that some of those people in the dumping actually do own multiple consoles for that reason. Blame piracy just as much on the people who choose to not pay for available games.

@Arawn93 Saying piracy is what killed the PSP is like suggesting Nintendo's console weren't just as rampantly pirated.
Even when the DS was current, I had to learn quickly to watch ebay listings carefully and only buy games sellers indicated were authentic. Maybe Nintendo should've gone after those Hong Kong sellers selling Pokemon games "new" a week after release for like $10. Why was piracy "a system killer" for the PSP any more than the DS or Wii?
You really think the average person was going to want to go risk making their PSP battery explode into a fire hazard so they can pirate games?

@Arawn93 Piracy was not the direct end of the PSP. You are giving pirates too much credit. Sony played a hand in it as well.

Couple of things, PSP didn't get killed as in fact had a 9 year run, selling 82mil units. There are many reasons why PSPs downfall came. Sure it's easy for Sony to claim it was 100% due to piracy, but truth is PSP just was a poor handheld.

Memory sticks were too expensive
The library of games was underwhelming
PSP wanted to be a multimedia device which never took off
It was more expensive than a DS
It had a poor battery life

DS was just a better overall deal. It was cheaper, had a better library and was more marketable.

Despite all that, PSP became the 8th best selling console. I don't know what role piracy played, but I'm reluctant to believe it was so powerful it killed the PSP alone.

@JustMonika yea, it's on PS4 and not Switch, a console practically made for people who said "no" to the WiiU.
I was not one of those people and I have great memories with ZombiU.

@KingMike
Comparing the current level of piracy on Switch to the hay day of piracy of the PSP is laughable.

@GoshJosh Piracy impacted PSP software sales negatively not hardware sales. Multiple developers have attested to this citing sizable download numbers versus poor opening performances. No piracy was not 100% the issue for the PSP failing, but it definitely wasn’t 0.01% the reason it failed either

Another point is that I've heard is that some devs would consider rentals as equivalent to piracy. Or was it used sales that some salty devs said they hated more than piracy?
Well sorry if, especially back in the day playing my SNES, buying every single game I enjoyed was something I could only wish of being capable of doing as a child.
Something that, as having some rough times then, I guess that makes me a filthy evil person then because some of the games to bring me enjoyment in those times were games I could merely rent.

@Arawn93 It's all in relative terms.
"Failure" is how accurately devs/publishers predicted their sales goals.
"Piracy" is just the easiest thing for devs to say about why they didn't succeed in their sales goals.

People are going to be the same no matter what console they bought.
I'm sure Switch owners were bound and determined to hack their consoles are probably similar in proportion to the number of PSP owners who were determined to hack their consoles.
Only people who were determined to never buy a game legitimately in the first place buy their consoles based on how hackable they are.
China and Korea have long been making consoles that are probably a better fit for that crowd anyways. (the emulation boxes)

PIRACY SOLD PSPs!! They sold many more units than software. Every cloud, eh. Look what happened to Vita sales when they doubled down on the anti-piracy! They basically got rid of the silver lining.

@Arawn93 I think the PSP was just one unlucky system. I personally don't support piracy but I mean you can't blame them for everything if the psp wasn't so easy to hack in the first place. PSP just had poor security the moment it shipped.

@Kayvoo Vita's failure was 100% all on Sony.

@Vexx234
I agree and partially explained. Proprietary memory cards & other anti-piracy measures, over engineered & expensive hardware with 2 models at launch, lack of investment in software and advertising and failure to utilise the upscaler on board OG units to dock to a TV are some of the reasons. The PSP was loved for many reasons then Sony managed to convince us all not to buy the Vita. I got mine for £25 in mint condition in 2014 & immediately researched the 'mystery port', yes it was going to be a Switch but Sony abandoned the idea in favour of Playstation TV. I bet a Sony exec cried when Switch was announced!

Soooooooooooooo long gay Bowser.

@Caryslan I seem to remember seeing some figures, that for a period of time PSP hardware was outselling PSP software.

@Chlocean I always planned on getting it for PS4 but never did. That's right.. they announced a physical version for PS4 and I waited and it never released so I must have simply forgotten over time. Would be nice to get a Switch port though since everything else gets ported to Switch, lol. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is another one I'm dying to have on the Switch. I got it on PS4 and it's amazing.

@Frailbay30 when music piracy started so many people said that it would not impact the music industry, if you make good music people
Will still buy it, piracy just makes it easier to check out a few songs before you do. We know how that turned out. Number 1 on the billboard charts when from selling about 3 million copies in one week to about 50,000 copies.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the most likely reason why they went after this guy hard is because he not only sold the pirating software, he would not even bother to say it was for anything but piracy. He also charged to fully unlock his custom OS to fully play pirated games (so he double-charged). Most other people who do this at least are smart enough to claim it was only for homebrew use and wouldn’t charge extra specifically for pirating games, so this guy made himself an easy target for Nintendo

Just remember why the MPAA and especially RIAA are such copyright trolls, with the later having tracked certain individuals for public shaming.
If you were an American (and probably other countries) in the 80s and 90s, you were probably such a casual movie or music thief and didn't even think about it. Who didn't have recorded tapes of movies recorded from TV (and who obeyed that one watching "time shifting" legal use limit?)

@KingMike Yeah exactly, and technically everyone using a DVR is a pirate to some of these lawyers lol. The whole copyright enforcement thing has really gotten out of hand lately.