Nintendo of America filed a case on 16 April, 2021 against a leader of hack creators, Team Xecuter Gary Bowser. Gary was arrested and charged in 2020 with 11 felony counts. The new lawsuit states that Gary infringed on Nintendo’s copyright in creating and selling its hacks. In a Seattle court, the case is filed to charge Bowser with one copyright violation and two trafficking counts.
The company said Gary has operation as an international pirate ring that sells Nintendo Switch hacking devices to hamper the companies’ security measures. All these will allow the buyers to run pirated Nintendo Switch games. The company has filed multiple lawsuits against sellers of the hacking tools, including the SX Pro, SX Core, and SX Lite. These three devices are used to hack Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite.
According to the lawsuit, Gary, since 2013, has been creating and selling Nintendo hacking devices. In 2013, he distributed a device designed to hack the Nintendo 3DS. The company has documented a lengthy history of his Switch hacks and details of how the device works. The suit seeks significant monetary damages and disgorgement of all profits from Team Xecuter’s sale of piracy-enabling software SX OS and a line of hardware devices that use various exploits to install the OS Switch units. As per the suit, “at one point, the SX OS was pre-installed on 89% of modded/hacked Nintendo Switch products available for sale,” but the source for that number is not provided.
As per the lawsuit, Gary is one of the key members of Team Xecuter, and he is the closest thing to a public face for the foreign manufacturer and team of coders that made up the supply chain. In promoting and selling SX OS, he worked with a network of developers; established a distribution chain of websites, resellers, testers.
The company has focused much of its legal efforts on resellers, with multiple lawsuits filed over the past few years. In one of the lawsuits, the company won a $2 million settlement, and on 15.April.2021, for a November lawsuit, the company won an injunction targeting an Amazon reseller. The company calls Nintendo Switch hacking and piracy a serious, worsening international problem.
