After suing a former Reddit moderator in October 2025 for pirating Switch games, a Washington court has ordered the individual in question to pay Nintendo $4.5 million in damages.
According to a September 25 TorrentFreak report, US District Judge Lauren King ordered former r/SwitchPirates moderator James "Archbox" Williams to cough up $4.5 million in damages to Nintendo after the company accused him of operating several pirate shops to illegally decrypt and distribute Switch games to the public.
The lawsuit, which was filed in a Washington federal court in June 2024, stated that Williams had been running this racket since at least 2019, using "circumvention device" software to bypass the company's systems and gain access to over 30 Nintendo Switch games. This includes titles like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Williams reportedly ignored the complaint at the time, which prompted Nintendo to seek the statutory maximum of $150,000 per title in October 2025. And just this week, Judge King agreed with Nintendo's request, stating that Williams was aware of the case, as he both hired a lawyer to object to a Google subpoena and continued posting on Reddit but opted to not respond to the company's lawsuit.
In one screenshot saved by TorrentFreak, Williams called himself a "pirate" in a Reddit thread, clarifying that he--and others like him--won't "give Nintendo $50 for a game" when there are "months of releases unavailable anywhere."
" Both Judge King and Nintendo know the guy who did it, and they want him to pay a lot for his actions.
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