Nintendo of America is asking the Western regional United States District Court to award it $4,500,000 in a default judgement against a once-anonymous user allegedly involved in distributing pirated Nintendo Switch games.
In a court motion filed on October 3, IP-related law firm Lowe Graham Jones claims on behalf of Nintendo that James Williams – known as Archbox online – decided not to respond to summons served in November 2024. This inaction allows a court to award Nintendo what it wants without Williams' input.
What it wants is "an award of $4,500,000," says the court motion, citing a 2023 judgement where Bungie was awarded $6,700,973 after cheat-maker Lavicheats failed to respond to a 2021 suit for comparison. Nintendo argues, however, that Archbox's case is actually much worse than Lavicheats' 2023 case, and "the money at stake by this Motion is nowhere near an amount that would compensate NOA for the seriousness of Defendants' conduct."
According to Nintendo, which focused on Archbox's posts on r/SwitchPirates and then an Arizona subreddit helping identify him as James Williams, Archbox is not only a "leading (if not primary) moderator of" SwitchPirates, but he also distributed "thousands" of stolen games by maintaining multiple Pirate Shops.
"The popularity of Nintendo's video games and consoles has made Nintendo an ongoing target of intellectual property thieves and hackers," the court motion concludes. "These individuals or entities benefit from Nintendo's innovation."
"NOA has been, and continues to be, damaged as a direct and proximate result of Williams' conduct," the motion adds after saying Nintendo of America is experiencing "extreme hardships" while Williams "would face little, if any, hardship if the Court were to enter the permanent injunction" against his purported involvement in piracy.
According to its recent financial results, Nintendo made $4.7 billion in gross profit during the last fiscal year.
