Nintendo tracked down an alleged Switch pirate via Reddit & repair orders

You may recall that, back in July, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against James “Archbox” Williams for Nintendo Switch piracy. He’s accused of being “operator, overseer, and driving force behind several Pirate Shops, through which Defendant has offered massive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games”. He’s also accused of promoting his pirate shops online and giving technical advice on how people can modify their Switch consoles and play pirated games.

Well, some new court filings from Nintendo have revealed how they managed to track him down. They had hired a law firm called Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp to investigate online pirate video game stores. In doing so, the firm found Archbox and used his online posts to trace him near Phoenix, Arizona. They found the same user on Reddit, and by the end of February 2024, “plaintiff [Nintendo] succeeded in linking ‘Archbox’ with at least two Nintendo accounts for an individual named James Williams”.

They would eventually find a pair of email accounts linked to a James Williams in Arizona. They were actually able to find his name in Nintendo’s system for tracking repairs, where a pair of repair orders were found under the same name with a Surprise, Arizona shipping address. It turned out that Williams had requested repairs from Nintendo. In March, Nintendo would send him a cease-and-desist letter that he had signed for via FedEx, Williams denied any wrongdoing, but nevertheless said in an email to Nintendo’s lawyers that he’d “comply and cooperate with any demands or requests…within [his] control”. He also shut down 3 out of his 4 pirate shops.

So, why are all these details now emerging? According to Nintendo, there’s a reason for that. Williams has since cut off communication and missed the required deadline where he was supposed to plead his case to the court. Because of this, there is now a default judgement in favor of Nintendo. However, the court was asking Nintendo for proof that they had done their best to get in contact with Williams. This is why these new details about the case have surfaced.

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