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Nintendo wins $4.5 million lawsuit against Switch pirate by default — defendant allegedly moderated r/SwitchPirates and sold pirated Switch games The defendant stopped cooperating with Nintendo, leading to the lawsuit and the default judgment. Nintendo of America just won a lawsuit against James Williams, who allegedly moderated the r/SwitchPirates subreddit and sold pirated Switch games online. According to Aftermath, the company sued Williams in June 2024 for copyright violations. However, they failed to respond even after several months, so the company asked for and received a default judgement in their favor. The court is now directing Williams to pay $4.5 million to Nintendo of America for damages and shut down the pirated shops they control. “To effectuate this injunction, Williams shall immediately disable access to all online ‘shops’ that he operates or otherwise controls which have offered to the public extensive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games for download,” Washington court clerk Joshua C. Lewis and deputy clerk Natalie Wood said in the default judgement filing. Williams was reportedly uncovered through an in-depth investigation by the company and its lawyers, which tracked them through their Archbox persona on Reddit. Nintendo then matched the details it found on the social media platform to its internal database and discovered that it was linked to a Nintendo account that had a handheld sent in for repairs. A few days after the unit was returned to Williams’ address, the company sent a cease-and-desist, to which the defendant allegedly replied via email. Nintendo said in its filing that Williams agreed to comply and cooperate with the company’s demands and requests that are within their control but has since cut-off communications. Because of this, it asked the court for a default judgement in October 2025, which the court finally granted. Nintendo is known for being litigious when it comes to its intellectual property. The developers of Switch emulator Yuzu settled with Nintendo for $2.4 million in 2024, while the company won a $2 million settlement against a Switch modder making backup devices like the MIG Switch and MIG Dumper last year. It has also successfully applied DMCA strikes on over 400 GitHub repositories hosting Switch emulators earlier this year. But despite many public wins, Nintendo does not always prevail in its lawsuits. Palworld, which is often described as “Pokémon with guns,” has sold over 5 million copies on Steam, and Nintendo hasn’t filed a copyright lawsuit against the company. Instead, it sued the developers of the game for patent infringement several months after it went viral. The case is still ongoing, but sources say that Nintendo could only expect a maximum payout of $30,000 if it were to win its case. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics. - coolitic They didn't do it this time, but I like it when Tom's introduces them as "notoriously litigious Nintendo".Reply - RealityChex This article was confusing to read, due to the nonsensical use of they and them when referring to one dude.Reply I went back to re-read the beginning to see if Nintendo had actually sued more defendants than Mr. Williams as part of this case. - jl4980 Reply "They" has been used as a singular pronoun in English since 1375. So it's been a singular pronoun for 651 years, which is longer than a lot of English words have existed. I get it though, English is notoriously difficult for non-native speakers to learn, but keep at it, you'll get there eventually, and then maybe your reading comprehension will improve to the point where simple articles like this one aren't so confusing.RealityChex said:This article was confusing to read, due to the nonsensical use of they and them when referring to one dude. - TerryLaze Reply No it hasn't...It was used in 1375 and for a while but it shifted to mean plural in the 18th century, that's some 300 years for it to have become purely NOT singular.jl4980 said:"They" has been used as a singular pronoun in English since 1375. Grammatical Shift: The rule prescribing that "they" must be strictly plural was introduced by prescriptive grammarians in the 18th century, similar to how "you" shifted from a strictly plural pronoun to a singular one centuries earlier. - DS426 ReplyRealityChex said:This article was confusing to read, due to the nonsensical use of they and them when referring to one dude. I went back to re-read the beginning to see if Nintendo had actually sued more defendants than Mr. Williams as part of this case. More specifically, it's used to refer to a singular person when sex/gender isn't known; English otherwise doesn't have a masculinity-neutral word for a person beyond sharing the same word that can also be plural.jl4980 said:"They" has been used as a singular pronoun in English since 1375. So it's been a singular pronoun for 651 years, which is longer than a lot of English words have existed. I get it though, English is notoriously difficult for non-native speakers to learn, but keep at it, you'll get there eventually, and then maybe your reading comprehension will improve to the point where simple articles like this one aren't so confusing. Confusing, yes. That's English for you. - sudokill Reply What is that? An AI summary telling you that a handful of prescriptivists didnt like how a word was being used?TerryLaze said:No it hasn't...It was used in 1375 and for a while but it shifted to mean plural in the 18th century, that's some 300 years for it to have become purely NOT singular. Guess what? Language isn't prescriptive. It wasn't in the 18th century and it isn't now. Singular 'they' has been used for many hundreds of years. This didn't stop being true in the 18th century just because some grammarians said so. - txfeinbergs More importantly to this article instead of the pronoun BS is that Nintendo will never see a dime of this, so what was the point?Reply - USAFRet Reply 1. To protect their IP.txfeinbergs said:More importantly to this article instead of the pronoun BS is that Nintendo will never see a dime of this, so what was the point? 2. To scare off the next person. - Thunder64 ReplyRealityChex said:This article was confusing to read, due to the nonsensical use of they and them when referring to one dude. I went back to re-read the beginning to see if Nintendo had actually sued more defendants than Mr. Williams as part of this case. Came here to comment on this. Not surprised I wasn't the only one. It was confusing to read they/them/their when referring to a single individual when it presumably should've been he/him/his based on the name. Unless this person lists their preferred pronouns somewhere it seems like changing the rules to not be offensive when you are going to offend people either way.
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