Nintendo is suing a Switch hacker named Gary Bowser.
As reported by Polygon, Nintendo of America has filed a lawsuit against Bowser, a 51-year-old Canadian who is an alleged member of the Xecuter team, the creators of Switch hacks.
That’s right – Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser is suing a Nintendo hacker named Gary Bowser. This is the Bowsers’ battle – in court.
In October, the US government issued multiple federal charges against Bowser and alleged team members Xecuter Max Louarn, a 48-year-old French citizen from Avignon, and Yuanning Chen, 35, from Shenzhen, China.
Bowser is currently being held in US custody after being arrested and deported from the Dominican Republic in September. Louarn has been arrested in Canada, from which the United States is seeking his extradition. Chen is still at large.
It seems that Nintendo is making the most of Gary Bowser’s custody in the United States. According to Polygon, the new lawsuit alleges that Bowser infringed Nintendo’s copyright in creating and selling its hacks. The lawsuit seeks to charge Bowser with two counts of trafficking and copyright infringement.
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The Xecuter team is probably best known for selling Nintendo Switch chips, but has been operating for years, selling mod chips for consoles since the original Xbox.
There are over a dozen members of Team Xecuter worldwide, including developers, website designers, device manufacturers, and resellers. The Xecuter team used a variety of product names for its devices, such as Gateway 3DS, Stargate, TrueBlue Mini, Classic2Magic and the SX line of devices that included SX OS, SX Pro, SX Lite and SX Core.
You may recognize the Gateway name. In 2014, Eurogamer reported that Gateway was accused of allowing users’ 3DS consoles to become irreparably blocked by a secret “kill switch” introduced in a recent update. Gateway previously complained about the release of copycat devices that used modified versions of its previous code, but were repackaged and sold as separate products.
In a June 2020 interview with TorrentFreak, Team Xecuter rejected the stigma of piracy, while accusing Nintendo of censorship, monopolistic control and legal scare tactics. The Justice Department sometimes noted that the Xecuter team “covered its illegal activity with the alleged desire to support gaming enthusiasts who wanted to design their own video games for non-commercial use,” but insisted that the overwhelming demand and use of its devices was to play pirate. video games.
Polygon reports that Nintendo wants $ 2,500 in damages for each trafficked device, $ 150,000 for each copyright infringement and the complete closure of Operation Bowser.