Nintendo has been awarded $4.5 million in damages in a lawsuit against a Switch user accused of hosting pirated games online. Nintendo was awarded a default judgement against James Williams, who did not respond to the lawsuit in court after it was filed in 2024.
Nintendo has also won a permanent injunction against Williams, which will force him to "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," as Aftermath reports.
Williams is also ordered to shut down any social media accounts, "including without limitation any Instagram, X, Reddit, and TikTok accounts," connected with piracy. He's additionally barred from "distributing, advertising, marketing, selling, reselling, uploading, downloading, offering for sale, or otherwise disseminating" software or hardware related to pirating Nintendo games.
This lawsuit has been making headlines since 2024. Nintendo apparently tracked Williams down when he sent a Switch console in for repair, according to a report from Game File. The company was looking for a Reddit user known as Archbox, who'd made posts indicating that he lived near Phoenix, AZ. When his shipping address appeared in Nintendo's customer service system, it seemingly became pretty easy for the company's lawyers to track him down and serve him legal papers.
Apparently the default judgement against Williams was already set when he cut off communication with the company in 2024. Yesterday's final ruling just makes that judgement official.
Nintendo itself put forward the $4.5 million figure. "Here, the amount of money sufficient to remedy NOA's injury would be extremely difficult to quantify; but it is indisputable that such amount would be large," the company said in a court filing, as reported by Polygon in 2025. "Therefore, the money at stake by this Motion is nowhere near an amount that would compensate NOA for the seriousness of Defendants' conduct."
If the number sounds familiar, that's probably because it's also the amount infamous Switch pirate Gary Bowser was ordered to pay in 2021. That number was ultimately upped to $10 million, which Bowser expects to continue paying back for the rest of his working life.
