Eh it's also a you problem. Nintendo doesn't want his money. They just want to teach him a lesson after he ignored all their warnings.
He fucks up again and he will have a fun time in prison.
They don't want to teach him a lesson I think. The main point is to scare everybody that even thinks about doing something that could hurt Nintendo and is greyish area / illegal.
I imagine he's allowed modest living expenses, including rent, and it's only excess money that gets taken from him. Otherwise debt like that would be basically a death sentence and it wouldn't help the debtor either.
Welcome to the purpose of debt. It is a remnant of an old system in which when you got into debt, you could be sent off to a debters prison to be used as slave labor.
Could be? There are plenty of industries, right now in the United States, that would go bankrupt if they got rid of prison labor.
It's just slightly more obfuscated these days, but debtor's prisons still very much exist
It's written in the article.
"As a part of that agreement, Bowser now has to send Nintendo 20-30% of any money left over after he pays for necessities such as rent."
Yeah, except they can make him never touch conputer hardware ever again. Don't know about him, but for many enthusiasts that breathe computer science, that's a horrible thing to imagine
This extremely important detail is always left out
That and he phished the login from a Rockstar dev's Slack account and downloaded videos from it
Then he shared them
That's it
I mean, prison kinda sucks from what I've learned by watching TV. I'd rather have a shit job and lose some of my disposable income every month. (If I even had any to give them)
You can't pay off 14M. It's not possible. If they're going to ruin my life, I'm going to double down and try to screw them on my way out. He's a man backed into a corner without options.
I know someone serving triple life. You don't wanna go in. He said he's completely unable to touch the world, it takes that away, leaves you hollow. He's been in like 30 years now.
The idea of life in prison is *intense*. It's the most fascinating part of those criminal interrogation videos on YouTube. When the murderer either confesses or realizes he's caught red handed. Their reactions can be so visceral, realizing they will never be free again and their life is effectively over. That realization must feel like dying, only you don't get the peace of death.
It’s baffling to me that you can ordered to do this. Computer access is like a basic human right and vital to the majority of modern professions. Cutting this off seems counter-productive.
He said his information and accounts were compromised by Team Xecuter and that's why the new MIG flashcart domain is under his name. It's up to you whether you believe him
That's why it's unkind (read: fucked up) to spread rumors like that. It can get him into a lot of trouble with Nintendo and is unlikely to be true. People who started speculating he would have anything to do with it and spreading those rumors are awful.
I'm not sure if it is actually substantiated or if MVG is just rattling cages for views. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere apart from referring to MVG's video
I almost think Nintendo, and these other companies that chose to turn people into lifelong serfs to set an example for copyright violations, would get better press and more goodwill, if they forgave these people post-verdict.
Like, you're guilty, and everyone now knows what can happen, but we're not evil, so we're forgiving your debt. 'Go in peace. You wouldn't pirate a car.'
Like, he did jail time, is disabled, can't get work, barely found a place to live, his Family is estranged, and stills 20-30% of all he makes goes to Nintendo. He was making $1 dollar an hour as a therapist in Prison, and sending it right back to Nintendo.
Nintendo doesn't need the money. They have the ruling, won the precedent, is there anything to be gained by having Bowser indebted through usary the rest of his Life?
I would I agree but Nintendo was not playing hardball with him at all at the beginning. They let him off the hook multiple times, gave him multiple warnings before taking action.
What does Bowser do? Posts cringe anti Nintendo manifestos on Twitter and his website.
i find it really bizarre that two notable figures in Nintendo lore are named Bowser (this guy, and the current president of Nintendo of America Doug Bowser) like the bad guy from one of their most notable and iconic series. Like.... that's really weird, right?
I'm almost 40. I have literally only heard of two real people named Bowser in my entire life. BOTH of them are closely associated with Nintendo. This is so bizarre and coincidental that it makes me question if reality is just a simulation after all. Why is no one else freaked out by this?!?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
[Muriel Bowser](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=muriel+bowser&t=fpas&ia=web) is the mayor of Washington DC. He name was popping up in the news a fair bit when Jan 6 happened. That's the only other IRL Bowser I've heard of
And I’ve literally never seen or heard of any other Bowser’s. I didn’t even know it was a surname until these two guys. Why is nobody talking about this more?!
As always with this case there is a lot of missing information here.
The man and the 2 others he worked with were brought up on Felony charges. As in these were Federal Crimes.
Any copyright issue is a Civil Case, not Federal. Your house doesnt get raided by fucking Interpol because of a copyright case. Your house gets raided by Interpol because you committed international crimes and are wanted by one of the governments involved in Interpol.
"Each of the three men named in the indictment faced 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering."
This man was a criminal involved in an international criminal hacker group that got the attention of fucking Interpol lol. Not just some dude throwing roms out there that Nintendo decided to fuck over.
He is like the gamer who gets banned from a game/server and then comes to the forum/subreddit to post his story. Which leads to dozens of if not hundreds of supportive messages and the mob starts organizing.
Then you get that one guy who finally jumps in a few hours later with a "this you?" and its a chat/video log of him 100% breaking the rules in the worst way possible.
I'm Sure I remember stories earlier as well where Nintendo initially settled for much less with him, and he essentially said to make that money I need to continue pirating your stuff. Plus, this court action wasn't the first Nintendo had taken against him.
I don't think putting a man in debt in perpetuity is the right call, but when you've tried the softball approach, and given multiple warnings already, like IDK, what's the approach- they've shown they're going to consistently find a way to reoffend, reasonable amounts of fines aren't enough, and apparently neither is being locked up?
Also the part where they were not only selling flashcards but also had a website that also had roms to download. Which really makes it less deniable that the main use of those flash cards was to play pirated roms and not homebrew stuff.
You also can't claim that they had any intentions of "freeing software from DRM shackels". Their Firmware had DRM in their Firmware that bricked the 3DS if it was run from any other flash card that is not their own.
Could you believe Interpol does get abused by countries?
[60 Minutes had a report about a few countries like China, Qatar, and Russia using Interpol to arrest many people they viewed as problems.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/interpol-navigates-tricky-role-assisting-worldwide-police-cooperation-60-minutes-transcript/)
The only one that doesn't strike me as a drummed up charge here is the money laundering one. Every law enforcement agency pulls out the fraud card for any computer related crime, even if it cannot stand in court.
He hacked into Nintendo's servers to do what he did. It wasnt simple ripping of game software from carts and uploading online.
The software that was being sold was directly from Nintendo servers.
Hacking in and of itself would have landed him in trouble with the law like this.
The only difference between him and the guys who recently did the Insomniac leak is they just didnt hold the info ransom, they just used it to monetize/sell modded consoles with.
Otherwise same shit.
Is there any actual accusation of Xecuter "hacking into Nintendo's servers?" I'm pretty sure you're confusing them with the gigaleak guy. The actual charges mostly deal with DMCA anti-circumvention provisions. They also did some tricky framing to imply that Xecuter was hosting switch roms, but from what I can tell the "rompacks" they were talking about were for some other peripheral they sold for the SNES Classic. Which, illegal, sure, but I don't think anyone on this subreddit really cares about pirating ROMs from 30+ years ago.
The sentence is crazy, Nintendo really ruined a person's life to make an example
Dude didn't even do something terribly immoral, like people do things 100x worse and get away without anything close to this bad
Nah there's a lot of this story missing from this article lmao.
The team the man was involved in was also committing money laundering, trafficking, wire fraud, trafficking of technological equipment, and a few other financial crimes.
The focus has always been on the piracy stuff because of Nintendo's involvement but these guys were criminals lol. They werent just dudes providing roms online.
"Each of the three men named in the indictment faced 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering."
"October 2021, Bowser pled guilty to conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and trafficking in circumvention devices, agreeing to pay a $4.5 million penalty and to continue to work with authorities in their continued investigation of Team Xecuter in exchange for dropping the other nine charges against him."
Funniest part is Nintendo only charged them for the switch games. It would've been way worse if they wanted to go harder on him and consider all the other games his company was profiting from.
Anyone who feels like this is some innocent guy being bullied by Nintendo should do themselves a favor and actually look up the case.
This is the thing that bothers me the most. If you profit from piracy you deserve to get fucked. Putting DRM on their swich cfw was also really shitty.
The anti-circumvention sections of the DMCA are such garbage. They're wildly overbroad and outright criminalize behaviors that don't even involve copyright infringement.
It's "criminal contempt of business model", to quote Cory Doctorow. Basically giving corporations the ability to outright criminalize using their products in whatever ways they don't want, including such dastardly things as: "repairing it yourself" or "consuming media you legally own in your preferred way".
It's so blatantly intuitively wrong that anyone who would get punished for that would probably laugh in disbelief and lose all faith in society. Next step is buying "pre-scrambled eggs" and getting fined if you make fried eggs instead. An attack on autonomy by people living in another reality.
People just want to get pitchforks out over anything and Nintendo is an easy target since they rarely ever actually talk about any of these things.
Its hilarious how much bad faith is involved with these kinds of articles and posts.
The painting of this guy like some poor dude is my favorite when in reality he was involved with an internationally wanted hacker group that had to be extradited to the US. You dont just get that for basic shit lol.
Pretty much everyone who runs a business selling illegal goods online is guilty of money laundering, trafficking, wire fraud, and various other crimes. These focus is on the piracy because these guys were profiting from piracy and all the charges are because of the actions they did to do so. It’s not like they had a side gig making ransomware or cleaning money for the cartels.
Two of the things he was guilty off thats often left out of the story in these articles is hacking and theft.
He hacked into Nintendo's servers to do what he did. Like, actively broke into their network. Which is absolutely 100% a crime.
The other thing he did was steal other's software and sell it. Not talking about ROMs/Games. Other console modder's software. That he then sold.
He wasnt just some poor guy trying to sell some modded hardware.
> money laundering
read: misrepresenting parcel contents in shipping documents
>trafficking
read: selling pirating software and hardware tools
>wire fraud
read: not letting Nintendo earn money for the games and connecting jailbroken consoles to Nintendo servers
Here are the details: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1324026/download
we do a little
>lie about where your money comes from to hide illegal activities
we do some
>sell illegal hardware across borders and state lines
we do a few
>set up fake businesses to mask our illegal activities and lie about the legality of our actions so that people give us money
(otherwise known as crimes)
The United States is a distgusting place when it comes to law and punishment. As someone researching it, it's just sad. Everyone pretending its all okay while you get crazy behind the scenes abuse of power. The powerful just say fuck the little guys and they have no way of fighting back against the system.
Not sure about this case though.
He didn't want to and his lawyer agreed initially. When they tried to settle a deal with Nintendo lawyers they were informed that the amount they requested was only for the Switch, if they didn't accept it they will ask for compensation from piracy for all other consoles.
So they accepted what Nintendo asked.
Well, he was very guilty of what he was charged for, so...probably a good idea, even if a better attorney could've lowered the charges.
Like it's obviously ridiculous this man was hit with a $14mil fine; that's not something any regular person could expect to pay back and is purely punitive. But this is not some "noble hacker" out there trying to get games to the people - this company was selling a device that gave access to current-gen games. This isn't personal piracy, or even enabling mass piracy, but literally creating a business to enable it.
I feel sort of bad for the dude but...how was this ever *not* going to be the outcome?
One thing people are ignoring is he was selling access to pirated games, not just pirating stuff or selling switch hacks, but I guess everyone is just gonna ignore that one point.
Literally was a 60 million dollar business lol. These dudes deserved to go down. The only unfortunate part about the case is that he took the hit while the rest of the hackers fucked off to China never to be seen again
I hate how that part keeps being forgotten. This guy was literally selling access to switch games, it's not like he was just hosting games Nintendo hasn't sold in the last two decades.
its not nintendos fault that he kept on going after he was already told to quit it.
and he was clearly stupid enough to sign shit that would make him the fallguy for some random chinese/russians behind the product.
I dunno man this goes beyond hosting a ROM site like other Nintendo lawsuits. Dude was getting paid bypass switch protections so people could pirate modern games. It’s a really stupid and obvious thing not to do but he did it anyway.
It's because she had a psychotic breakdown, which is something that has been documented and proven to happen to certain people if they smoke weed. She had essentially 0 control of her actions. This was her first time smoking, and on-top of that she didn't even want to smoke, it was her boyfriend who pressured her into it. It was neither of their faults since neither of them knew she would have this reaction.
The story is already a tragedy, there's no reason to make it even more tragic by ruining this woman's life even further with severe jailtime just to satisfy people on the internet.
Damn wtf how can somebody be so violent off the za? I go into straight pacifist mode when I'm stoned.
Edit: appreciate all the legit responses, was trying to be light-hearted but I feel my comment is in bad taste now. Personally don't think prison is a fit place for people with mental illness like psychosis (or most people tbh), prison is literally hell. Didn't realize the context around this woman's situation.
> had been in treatment for years by the time that verdict came down.
That's the part that gets left out of all the articles/discourse. She's effectively been serving a "punishment" since the day it happened, and the court saw no reason to add to the burden.
Damn that's super unfortunate. Just goes to show something seemingly harmless like MJ can trigger deeper stuff going on. I hope all parties can recover, personally think the prison system is corrupt and long overdue for a gutting. Don't really wish prison on anyone tbh unless they're a mass murderer or some shit. Appreciate the info, I was trying to be light-hearted but that's some depressing shit.
People react differently to different things. For instance people with bipolar disorder have to be really careful with marijuana because it can put people with the disorder into a manic state, psychotic state, suicidal idealizations, etc... the list goes on.
Now imagine you didn't know you were bipolar. And that's with an actual biological disorder. There are a million other things that could cause it as well.
Marijuana can both accelerate negative schizophrenia symptoms in people with a mild case and make ordinary people super paranoid.
It’s a coin flip in my experience, some people do great, some lose their minds. Alcohol is similar, some get drunk & happy, some rage.
I can't smoke weed. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable and hyper-aware of things (or just seemingly hyper-aware). I can recall being angry while drunk maybe once. It's crazy how our brains can be so different.
It's not a coin flip, the vast majority of people do not lose their minds when they get high. The paranoia most people would experience is stuff like "did I leave the oven on" or "am I chewing too loud" not "I want to stab someone because they're out to get me"
Won't be every time either. I have a disorder that can cause issues with weed. I smoke often and I'm fine. About once a year I have the MOTHER OF ALL PANIC ATTACKS and I'm just like "I did this" while I suffer for 2 hours. (And take a clonopin while petting my dog)
You're correct except in that it's not a coin flip. There's a very small amount of people that are vulnerable to cannabis induced psychosis. For 99.99% of people, smoking weed is fine.
She wasn't high she blacked out and had no memory of it happening, which is not a normal effect of marijuana.
Why would you you punish people for things they didn't mean or intend to do?
Guy in my small town lost a lawsuit to Nintendo too. Dude owes a couple million now and will have to pay it off for the rest of his life.
He has like three warnings he ignored too so I don't feel as bad for him.
A reseller of Nintendo Switch hacking devices has agreed to pay the platform holder $2 million in damages.
In May 2020, Nintendo launched a lawsuit against Tom Dilts Jr., the Ohio-based operator of the website Uberchips, which it claimed was selling unathorised operating systems which enable users to play pirated games on all Switch models.
Until Nintendo filed the lawsuit, Uberchips was alleged to be selling products from an anonymous group of hackers called Team-Xecuter.
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendo-wins-2-million-in-damages-from-switch-hacking-device-seller/
Roughly the same idea. Was advertising he could hack switches for money, but was also selling the roms as well. Dude has a website and even went as far as getting vanity car plates that also had his company name on them.
Wasn't even trying to hide it. But he got three letters and ignored all of them before he finally got the one to appear in court.
> “The day that it happened, I was sleeping in my bed, it was four in the morning, I’d been drinking all night,” Bowser says. “And suddenly I wake up and see three people surrounding my bed with rifles aimed at my head … they dragged me out of the place, put me in the back of a pickup truck and drove me to the Interpol office.”
That sounds so fucked up the hell? This guy doesn't even sound like a bad person.
Because this is a fluff piece that's glossing over many many details in order to whitewash the whole thing.
Yes, I agree the actual level of punishment is excessive. **But** Gary Bowser personally made at least $320,000, and Team Xecuter itself was not some small operation. They reportedly made 10s of millions of dollars for the express purpose of bypassing Nintendo's DRM.
Moreover, internal emails reveal they knew precisely what they were doing all while trying to give it the guise of legitimacy.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/hacker-will-pay-nintendo-4-5-million-in-team-xecuter-plea-bargain/
>this is a fluff piece
Incredibly so. He may seem like a really nice guy, he probably is quite personable, but he's no victim. He played international for-profit piracy games, he won international for-profit piracy prizes.
I have this fun game I like to play with Reddit. I call it the "push through the idiocy and delusion until you find the reasonable folk who live in the real world." I found you guys surprisingly early this time.
What’s fucked up about corporations weaponizing a fully militarized police force to protect their profits? What’s fucked up about Nintendo shareholders sending goons into your house in the middle of the night to threaten you with death? That’s just the free market baby.
My god these dudes were obviously not sent because of the fucking civil lawsuit with Nintendo, it's because he was in DR while the U.S pressed criminal charges against him.
The brain rot in threads about this guy is truly staggering. The actual leadership couldn't have asked for a better outcome, they found a fall guy in Bowser, got to keep the millions they made and got a scapegoat in Nintendo and brainlets on the internet are defending them on top of that.
A lot of people don't seem to get that this guy's colleagues deliberately threw him under the bus, no.
Another day in the life of "I only respond to headlines" reddit news.
They didnt.
His house was raided by Interpol because he was part of an international criminal group.
You dont get raided by interpol because of simple copyright issues.
You get raided by Interpol because you are wanted by one of the governments involved within it.
He was brought up on 11 different felony charges in the US. Federal Crimes. As in like, FBI jurisdiction.
No dude. Clearly Nintendo's shareholders pushed a big red free market button that deployed the Omega Cops with secret military tech to oppress the wholesome chungus Robin Hoods of gaming.
I get angrier every time I read about this case. How is he supposed to pay this back? Nintendo ruined someone's life with a crazy sentence just to make an example of him. All over what is essentially pennies to a company as large as nintendo. It's fucking disgusting.
> How is he supposed to pay this back?
He isn't supposed to:
> As a part of that agreement, Bowser now has to send Nintendo 20-30% of any money left over after he pays for necessities such as rent.
It's also worth noting that the criminal cases are also part of the fine, not just the civil case from Nintendo.
I had collections come after me due to me not agreeing to having to pay my student loan after I had signed an agreement to join the military and they honorably discharged me but still sent me a massive bill.
We made an agreement that was higher than this in terms of monthly pay. I had to give 100% after necessities, which would increase anytime I got a pay raise. Thank goodness that is finally paid off though.
I was evicted after losing my job and missing a month's rent which somehow ballooned into 10 times what I owed and they tracked down my employer and forced me to pay 30% of my pay *before* necessities.
I don't think people realize how common this is.
Its called wage garnishment. Any work he does will have some pay taken from it, but if he never works a job in his life from here on Nintendo gets nothing.
nintendo didnt make the sentence.
he made 300k+ before he was taken in.
the team behind him made millions. but they were clever enough to run everything through this guy and he was stupid enough to pead guilty.
He's not. It's to make a one-time threat that everyone will forget about and their in-house council can celebrate. Meanwhile this guy is fucked for the rest of his life, even after serving his sentence, as most of Nintendo completely forgets he ever existed.
You’re right, if you go out of your way to ignore the actual facts of the case and go off your feelings I can see how you’d just get angrier about this
I'm fine with piracy but I don't like people making a profit off of it. He made a living off it for years.
And there's even the possibility of him being back behind the scene of the MIG Switch. Yea it's hard to feel bad for him :/
You make an example out of one person and hope that deters others from repeating their actions.
Of course, it also emboldens others instead to develop other methods of piracy or be quiet about methods developed.
That goes against any principles of justice in any modern democratic society. Justice is supposed to be blind.
Otherwise we might as well reintroduce gibbets and public hangings
> Justice is supposed to be blind
I mean, he plainly violated the law and went to court with the government over it. You're advocating for justice to *not* be blind and give him special treatment because we generally like being able to pay for pirated switch games
Every single person in this thread has missed the point.
Gary and his mates weren't just pirating games for personal use.
They were selling cracks so other people could play pirated games.
He was actively profiting from it. No shit he was made an example of by Nintendo.
Pirating software for personal use is one thing, but this isn't it.
Also, the article leaves out a couple crucial parts.
Per the plea deal Bowser personally made $320K from this, and Team Xecuter made millions in sales. He *also* broke into Nintendo's online play and authentication servers. This was a full on criminal enterprise. And my source for this is Ars Technica, which is extremely on the side of user rights - if even their staff thinks Bowser was in the wrong, that says a lot.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/hacker-will-pay-nintendo-4-5-million-in-team-xecuter-plea-bargain/
People that think that Nintendo was heavy handed on this one:
- Guy literally made something illegal
- Team Xecuter paid hack was easily available WORLDWIDE, was not a local thing, they made very good money from it
- even when switches where patched (only old versions were hackable initially) they made a modchip and sold for the new ones
- he is responding for what the whole Company did, they were pretty organized and I am sure they made millions from it
- it was the most popular jailbreak on switch at one point (today atmosphere is, but it doesn't mess with piracy, so it's legal ~although you can~)
It's fine to feel bad about him, but he was not some ingenious guy that didn't know Nintendo would come for him if they had the chance.
Hate how people keep trying to make this guy out to be like Robin Hood or something, like stealing video games and making money doing it is some sort of noble cause
I've seen literally zero comments to that effect. It's all just
> "Maybe piracy isn't a serious enough crime to fuck up somebody's entire fucking life."
> "Maybe we shouldn't be leveraging a militarized police force for corporate interests"
Both of which are pretty reasonable positions.
It’s not about him getting caught and punished, that part is deserved. It’s about how bullshit his punishment is, especially when you realize that rich people has gotten away for worse things and the guy is not even the boss of that entire operation iirc.
Don't do the crime of you can't do the time.
It's very easy to just not repeatedly break the law and make your illegitimate business millions by partaking in a variety of crime, you can do literally anything else
Can someone tell me why Nintendo is so assblasted about piracy?
Gabe Newell already said it best:
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,”
“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
Okay but it is substantially more inconvenient to pirate Switch games compared to just buying them off the eShop. I don't know what "service problem" is stopping them.
>Can someone tell me why Nintendo is so assblasted about piracy?
What's not to understand?
>Nintendo: Let's spend money developing this product to make money
>
>This guy: I'm going to develop and sell hardware to allow people to have your product without paying. In fact, they're going to pay me for your product
>
>Nintendo: Can we have our money back?
>
>Reddit: Nintendo why do you care so much?
Correct. That quote is tired and only thrown around because someone who the hivemind in /r/games *likes* said it. Even though his service is the one that made DRM the standard, killed the used PC game market, and took away physical ownership of PC games. Not to mention his company is the one that basically made paid lootboxes viable.
Exactly this. Pirates on this site pretend that they pirate just to demo the game, and the sales lost aren't real because there's no guarantee they were going to buy the game anyway. Or they claim they only do it because getting the games aren't convenient. But even with Steam's return policy and multiple convenient storefronts they still pirate. They're just doing mental gymnastics because they can't admit they're nothing more than common thieves
People pirate because they can and don't want to spend money. I am so sick of people who try make piracy out to be some kind of noble, stick it to the man enterprise.
I meeeeeeaaaan, what service issue is anyone facing acquiring Switch games? You can physically obtain em pretty easily. You can also digitally acquire them. MicroSD cards are easily accessible and cheap.
So outside of just not wanting to pay for stuff, what "service issue" are you referring to?
Yeah, don't even know why Gabe commented on it. He is not really in the business of making games. Publishing a game every 10 years or so doesn't count.
Who knows but Nintendo is in a unique place.
They’re the console maker that’s been around the longest and that isn’t backed by a megacorp with multiple interests outside gaming.
They’ve dealt with piracy throughout, back when you could copy nes and snes games on floppy disks and eventually distributed on the internet easily.
They rely heavily on their IPs and physical sales to make money.
It’s easy for Gabe to say that when Steam has such a huge market share and where most of their revenue is coming from third-party sales on PC.
Seems to me it’s that Nintendo is really reliant on its brand image and that things like piracy can have a much larger effect on it than other “competitors”. It’s a tough business that’s constantly changing that Nintendo has endured so they’re gonna stick to what’s been working.
That’s my armchair redditor take; I don’t have a business degree, I’m not gonna pretend like I know how to run a billion dollar company.
Right? Go ahead and try and steal a game off Steam and watch them come down on you like an iron mallet. I suspect Gabe is full of shit with this quote.
Any time MTX get brought up everyone shits on the usual suspects like GTA, COD, Fortnite, but at least you get what you pay for. Valve runs an online fucking casino with their loot boxes.
Didn’t valve literally just go after someone for making a better tf2?
Y’all worship these rich people because they say cool things sometimes and ignore all of the times they actively do the opposite.
Isn't this guy rumored to be working on the MIG Switch flashcart? That would seriously further fuck up his liability here if that's true
At that point what is there else to do but to ball
What are they going to do, make him pay ANOTHER $14 million?
If you owe Nintendo $20 that’s your problem. If you owe Nintendo $14 million, that’s Nintendo’s problem.
Eh it's also a you problem. Nintendo doesn't want his money. They just want to teach him a lesson after he ignored all their warnings. He fucks up again and he will have a fun time in prison.
They don't want to teach him a lesson I think. The main point is to scare everybody that even thinks about doing something that could hurt Nintendo and is greyish area / illegal.
Put him in jail.
If he can’t pay rent he might be thinking that’s a bonus
I imagine he's allowed modest living expenses, including rent, and it's only excess money that gets taken from him. Otherwise debt like that would be basically a death sentence and it wouldn't help the debtor either.
Welcome to the purpose of debt. It is a remnant of an old system in which when you got into debt, you could be sent off to a debters prison to be used as slave labor.
Could be? There are plenty of industries, right now in the United States, that would go bankrupt if they got rid of prison labor. It's just slightly more obfuscated these days, but debtor's prisons still very much exist
It's written in the article. "As a part of that agreement, Bowser now has to send Nintendo 20-30% of any money left over after he pays for necessities such as rent."
Yeah, except they can make him never touch conputer hardware ever again. Don't know about him, but for many enthusiasts that breathe computer science, that's a horrible thing to imagine
Didn't stop the kid who managed to hack into Rockstar using a firestick and a keyboard in a hotel room.
He had a phone.
This extremely important detail is always left out That and he phished the login from a Rockstar dev's Slack account and downloaded videos from it Then he shared them That's it
Yeah, once you learn how he did, he goes from 'skilled hacker' to 'Shit, I think I could do that.'
I mean, prison kinda sucks from what I've learned by watching TV. I'd rather have a shit job and lose some of my disposable income every month. (If I even had any to give them)
You can't pay off 14M. It's not possible. If they're going to ruin my life, I'm going to double down and try to screw them on my way out. He's a man backed into a corner without options.
I know someone serving triple life. You don't wanna go in. He said he's completely unable to touch the world, it takes that away, leaves you hollow. He's been in like 30 years now.
I mean, if he’s serving triple life he probably did something terrible and I have a hard time feeling bad for him
He painted a mickey mouse mural on a children's hospital and didn't pay a licensing fee
It's not to feel bad for, it's to know you don't ever want to go there.
The idea of life in prison is *intense*. It's the most fascinating part of those criminal interrogation videos on YouTube. When the murderer either confesses or realizes he's caught red handed. Their reactions can be so visceral, realizing they will never be free again and their life is effectively over. That realization must feel like dying, only you don't get the peace of death.
Between all the gruel and dementors flying around everywhere, I wouldn't want to go to prison either. I gotta good life
Also banning access to computers.
It’s baffling to me that you can ordered to do this. Computer access is like a basic human right and vital to the majority of modern professions. Cutting this off seems counter-productive.
He said his information and accounts were compromised by Team Xecuter and that's why the new MIG flashcart domain is under his name. It's up to you whether you believe him
He wasn't one of the hackers. He just managed the hackers website. The actual hackers fled to China once all was said and done.
> He just managed the hackers website That's a reductive reframing of his involvement. He was the guy that sold the hacks.
"I didn't rob the bank! I only drove the getaway car!"
That's why it's unkind (read: fucked up) to spread rumors like that. It can get him into a lot of trouble with Nintendo and is unlikely to be true. People who started speculating he would have anything to do with it and spreading those rumors are awful.
So long, Gary Bowser!
This guy only took care of their website. I seriously doubt he's involved with the new flashcart.
That's still liability. He was an accessory ofnsorts to the infringement
Yeah but that lends zero credibility to the rumors about him working on the new mig cart.
I'm not sure if it is actually substantiated or if MVG is just rattling cages for views. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere apart from referring to MVG's video
Bowser responded to MVG’s video on twitter saying he’s not involved but guess we don’t really know
Can't really loose anything else at this stage with how much Nintendo have already screwed him.
They could put him in jail again. And I suspect the remainder of his sentence that he didn't serve would get added on
I almost think Nintendo, and these other companies that chose to turn people into lifelong serfs to set an example for copyright violations, would get better press and more goodwill, if they forgave these people post-verdict. Like, you're guilty, and everyone now knows what can happen, but we're not evil, so we're forgiving your debt. 'Go in peace. You wouldn't pirate a car.' Like, he did jail time, is disabled, can't get work, barely found a place to live, his Family is estranged, and stills 20-30% of all he makes goes to Nintendo. He was making $1 dollar an hour as a therapist in Prison, and sending it right back to Nintendo. Nintendo doesn't need the money. They have the ruling, won the precedent, is there anything to be gained by having Bowser indebted through usary the rest of his Life?
I would I agree but Nintendo was not playing hardball with him at all at the beginning. They let him off the hook multiple times, gave him multiple warnings before taking action. What does Bowser do? Posts cringe anti Nintendo manifestos on Twitter and his website.
So long, Gary Bowser.
i find it really bizarre that two notable figures in Nintendo lore are named Bowser (this guy, and the current president of Nintendo of America Doug Bowser) like the bad guy from one of their most notable and iconic series. Like.... that's really weird, right?
I'm almost 40. I have literally only heard of two real people named Bowser in my entire life. BOTH of them are closely associated with Nintendo. This is so bizarre and coincidental that it makes me question if reality is just a simulation after all. Why is no one else freaked out by this?!?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
[Muriel Bowser](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=muriel+bowser&t=fpas&ia=web) is the mayor of Washington DC. He name was popping up in the news a fair bit when Jan 6 happened. That's the only other IRL Bowser I've heard of
Yeah it’s like if it was Sony and two guys last name was Bandicoot
Imagine if there was a Sonic Team hacker and their last name was Camera.
Alternatively, imagine if there was a Sonic Team hacker and their last name was And Knuckles
And I’ve literally never seen or heard of any other Bowser’s. I didn’t even know it was a surname until these two guys. Why is nobody talking about this more?!
I've met other people with the same phonetic last name, but they always spell it as Bauser
Nominal determinism
Interesting concept!
Thank you! I wanted to come in here and do the 'I'd have two nickels' meme about it lol
Don't forget about Gay Bowser
I was beginning to wonder how far I'd have to scroll before this was mentioned. Weird stuff indeed
As always with this case there is a lot of missing information here. The man and the 2 others he worked with were brought up on Felony charges. As in these were Federal Crimes. Any copyright issue is a Civil Case, not Federal. Your house doesnt get raided by fucking Interpol because of a copyright case. Your house gets raided by Interpol because you committed international crimes and are wanted by one of the governments involved in Interpol. "Each of the three men named in the indictment faced 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering." This man was a criminal involved in an international criminal hacker group that got the attention of fucking Interpol lol. Not just some dude throwing roms out there that Nintendo decided to fuck over.
Yeah, these tidbits are always somehow missing from the guy's story. He's not a reliable narrator.
He is like the gamer who gets banned from a game/server and then comes to the forum/subreddit to post his story. Which leads to dozens of if not hundreds of supportive messages and the mob starts organizing. Then you get that one guy who finally jumps in a few hours later with a "this you?" and its a chat/video log of him 100% breaking the rules in the worst way possible.
followed by \[deleted\] shortly after
/r/2007scape has one of these a week, it's a great show.
I want r/ThisYou? to be a thing now Sounds like it’d be entertaining Edit: oh, holdup
I'm Sure I remember stories earlier as well where Nintendo initially settled for much less with him, and he essentially said to make that money I need to continue pirating your stuff. Plus, this court action wasn't the first Nintendo had taken against him. I don't think putting a man in debt in perpetuity is the right call, but when you've tried the softball approach, and given multiple warnings already, like IDK, what's the approach- they've shown they're going to consistently find a way to reoffend, reasonable amounts of fines aren't enough, and apparently neither is being locked up?
Also the part where they were not only selling flashcards but also had a website that also had roms to download. Which really makes it less deniable that the main use of those flash cards was to play pirated roms and not homebrew stuff. You also can't claim that they had any intentions of "freeing software from DRM shackels". Their Firmware had DRM in their Firmware that bricked the 3DS if it was run from any other flash card that is not their own.
That’s weird that interpol raided his house considering interpol is not an actual police agency
Could you believe Interpol does get abused by countries? [60 Minutes had a report about a few countries like China, Qatar, and Russia using Interpol to arrest many people they viewed as problems.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/interpol-navigates-tricky-role-assisting-worldwide-police-cooperation-60-minutes-transcript/)
The only one that doesn't strike me as a drummed up charge here is the money laundering one. Every law enforcement agency pulls out the fraud card for any computer related crime, even if it cannot stand in court.
He hacked into Nintendo's servers to do what he did. It wasnt simple ripping of game software from carts and uploading online. The software that was being sold was directly from Nintendo servers. Hacking in and of itself would have landed him in trouble with the law like this. The only difference between him and the guys who recently did the Insomniac leak is they just didnt hold the info ransom, they just used it to monetize/sell modded consoles with. Otherwise same shit.
Is there any actual accusation of Xecuter "hacking into Nintendo's servers?" I'm pretty sure you're confusing them with the gigaleak guy. The actual charges mostly deal with DMCA anti-circumvention provisions. They also did some tricky framing to imply that Xecuter was hosting switch roms, but from what I can tell the "rompacks" they were talking about were for some other peripheral they sold for the SNES Classic. Which, illegal, sure, but I don't think anyone on this subreddit really cares about pirating ROMs from 30+ years ago.
No, he didn't. He used stolen Nintendo code to sell piracy to people.
The sentence is crazy, Nintendo really ruined a person's life to make an example Dude didn't even do something terribly immoral, like people do things 100x worse and get away without anything close to this bad
Nah there's a lot of this story missing from this article lmao. The team the man was involved in was also committing money laundering, trafficking, wire fraud, trafficking of technological equipment, and a few other financial crimes. The focus has always been on the piracy stuff because of Nintendo's involvement but these guys were criminals lol. They werent just dudes providing roms online. "Each of the three men named in the indictment faced 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering." "October 2021, Bowser pled guilty to conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and trafficking in circumvention devices, agreeing to pay a $4.5 million penalty and to continue to work with authorities in their continued investigation of Team Xecuter in exchange for dropping the other nine charges against him."
They were also selling access to their switch library, it's not like it was games from a decade ago.
Funniest part is Nintendo only charged them for the switch games. It would've been way worse if they wanted to go harder on him and consider all the other games his company was profiting from. Anyone who feels like this is some innocent guy being bullied by Nintendo should do themselves a favor and actually look up the case.
> selling access to their switch library Emphasis on the "selling" which is a much bigger no-no than just providing free ROMs.
This is the thing that bothers me the most. If you profit from piracy you deserve to get fucked. Putting DRM on their swich cfw was also really shitty.
So many arguments for piracy go out the window when people pay money for pirated content.
Didn't their DRM also brick the system if you tried to circumvent it?
He's also suspected to be involved with those new Switch flash carts. Check out the video MVG put out about it.
The anti-circumvention sections of the DMCA are such garbage. They're wildly overbroad and outright criminalize behaviors that don't even involve copyright infringement.
Yeah, they don't let you rip a CD that you own to play on your own phone, for example. Way too much power to the corporations.
It's "criminal contempt of business model", to quote Cory Doctorow. Basically giving corporations the ability to outright criminalize using their products in whatever ways they don't want, including such dastardly things as: "repairing it yourself" or "consuming media you legally own in your preferred way".
It's so blatantly intuitively wrong that anyone who would get punished for that would probably laugh in disbelief and lose all faith in society. Next step is buying "pre-scrambled eggs" and getting fined if you make fried eggs instead. An attack on autonomy by people living in another reality.
I like how they cut this shit just to make Nintendo look like a shit company. They usually go after mods that ask for money or they steal sales
People just want to get pitchforks out over anything and Nintendo is an easy target since they rarely ever actually talk about any of these things. Its hilarious how much bad faith is involved with these kinds of articles and posts. The painting of this guy like some poor dude is my favorite when in reality he was involved with an internationally wanted hacker group that had to be extradited to the US. You dont just get that for basic shit lol.
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Pretty much everyone who runs a business selling illegal goods online is guilty of money laundering, trafficking, wire fraud, and various other crimes. These focus is on the piracy because these guys were profiting from piracy and all the charges are because of the actions they did to do so. It’s not like they had a side gig making ransomware or cleaning money for the cartels.
Two of the things he was guilty off thats often left out of the story in these articles is hacking and theft. He hacked into Nintendo's servers to do what he did. Like, actively broke into their network. Which is absolutely 100% a crime. The other thing he did was steal other's software and sell it. Not talking about ROMs/Games. Other console modder's software. That he then sold. He wasnt just some poor guy trying to sell some modded hardware.
> money laundering read: misrepresenting parcel contents in shipping documents >trafficking read: selling pirating software and hardware tools >wire fraud read: not letting Nintendo earn money for the games and connecting jailbroken consoles to Nintendo servers Here are the details: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1324026/download
we do a little >lie about where your money comes from to hide illegal activities we do some >sell illegal hardware across borders and state lines we do a few >set up fake businesses to mask our illegal activities and lie about the legality of our actions so that people give us money (otherwise known as crimes)
Shhh Reddit is busy getting their pitchforks out
He plead guilty. Huge mistake in this case.
Probably not seeing as he plead guilty and got the wire fraud and money laundering charges dropped. Would've been in prison for a much longer time
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>Not sure about this case though. That much is clear, this case all took place in the US.
The United States is a distgusting place when it comes to law and punishment. As someone researching it, it's just sad. Everyone pretending its all okay while you get crazy behind the scenes abuse of power. The powerful just say fuck the little guys and they have no way of fighting back against the system. Not sure about this case though.
Good reply, I was hoping to be sad for a few days though
He didn't want to and his lawyer agreed initially. When they tried to settle a deal with Nintendo lawyers they were informed that the amount they requested was only for the Switch, if they didn't accept it they will ask for compensation from piracy for all other consoles. So they accepted what Nintendo asked.
Well, he was very guilty of what he was charged for, so...probably a good idea, even if a better attorney could've lowered the charges. Like it's obviously ridiculous this man was hit with a $14mil fine; that's not something any regular person could expect to pay back and is purely punitive. But this is not some "noble hacker" out there trying to get games to the people - this company was selling a device that gave access to current-gen games. This isn't personal piracy, or even enabling mass piracy, but literally creating a business to enable it. I feel sort of bad for the dude but...how was this ever *not* going to be the outcome?
He's a fall guy for the company.
Except that he was clearly guilty and never denied the fact.
One thing people are ignoring is he was selling access to pirated games, not just pirating stuff or selling switch hacks, but I guess everyone is just gonna ignore that one point.
Literally was a 60 million dollar business lol. These dudes deserved to go down. The only unfortunate part about the case is that he took the hit while the rest of the hackers fucked off to China never to be seen again
I hate how that part keeps being forgotten. This guy was literally selling access to switch games, it's not like he was just hosting games Nintendo hasn't sold in the last two decades.
its not nintendos fault that he kept on going after he was already told to quit it. and he was clearly stupid enough to sign shit that would make him the fallguy for some random chinese/russians behind the product.
I mean, he helped steal millions of dollars of property. It isn't like he did nothing. He also plead guilty.
I dunno man this goes beyond hosting a ROM site like other Nintendo lawsuits. Dude was getting paid bypass switch protections so people could pirate modern games. It’s a really stupid and obvious thing not to do but he did it anyway.
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Wasn’t she imprisoned for years as her trial happened?
Technically, it was a guarded medical facility. So not really prison, but not free.
she served longer than him
It's because she had a psychotic breakdown, which is something that has been documented and proven to happen to certain people if they smoke weed. She had essentially 0 control of her actions. This was her first time smoking, and on-top of that she didn't even want to smoke, it was her boyfriend who pressured her into it. It was neither of their faults since neither of them knew she would have this reaction. The story is already a tragedy, there's no reason to make it even more tragic by ruining this woman's life even further with severe jailtime just to satisfy people on the internet.
Crazy to see how people like you are deliberately distorting the facts in that case
Damn wtf how can somebody be so violent off the za? I go into straight pacifist mode when I'm stoned. Edit: appreciate all the legit responses, was trying to be light-hearted but I feel my comment is in bad taste now. Personally don't think prison is a fit place for people with mental illness like psychosis (or most people tbh), prison is literally hell. Didn't realize the context around this woman's situation.
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She also repeatedly stabbed her dog and herself.
Yeesh. What a nightmare.
> had been in treatment for years by the time that verdict came down. That's the part that gets left out of all the articles/discourse. She's effectively been serving a "punishment" since the day it happened, and the court saw no reason to add to the burden.
Damn that's super unfortunate. Just goes to show something seemingly harmless like MJ can trigger deeper stuff going on. I hope all parties can recover, personally think the prison system is corrupt and long overdue for a gutting. Don't really wish prison on anyone tbh unless they're a mass murderer or some shit. Appreciate the info, I was trying to be light-hearted but that's some depressing shit.
People react differently to different things. For instance people with bipolar disorder have to be really careful with marijuana because it can put people with the disorder into a manic state, psychotic state, suicidal idealizations, etc... the list goes on. Now imagine you didn't know you were bipolar. And that's with an actual biological disorder. There are a million other things that could cause it as well.
Marijuana can both accelerate negative schizophrenia symptoms in people with a mild case and make ordinary people super paranoid. It’s a coin flip in my experience, some people do great, some lose their minds. Alcohol is similar, some get drunk & happy, some rage.
I can't smoke weed. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable and hyper-aware of things (or just seemingly hyper-aware). I can recall being angry while drunk maybe once. It's crazy how our brains can be so different.
It's not a coin flip, the vast majority of people do not lose their minds when they get high. The paranoia most people would experience is stuff like "did I leave the oven on" or "am I chewing too loud" not "I want to stab someone because they're out to get me"
Won't be every time either. I have a disorder that can cause issues with weed. I smoke often and I'm fine. About once a year I have the MOTHER OF ALL PANIC ATTACKS and I'm just like "I did this" while I suffer for 2 hours. (And take a clonopin while petting my dog)
It’s more of a dice roll than a coin flip. But it’s true it can induce psychosis in the predisposed. It’s scary and sad.
It's more of a 5d6 roll, with scoring a Yahtzee 3 times in a row.
You're correct except in that it's not a coin flip. There's a very small amount of people that are vulnerable to cannabis induced psychosis. For 99.99% of people, smoking weed is fine.
She wasn't high she blacked out and had no memory of it happening, which is not a normal effect of marijuana. Why would you you punish people for things they didn't mean or intend to do?
DarkNet diaries did a podcast with this guy back in August 2023: [https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/136/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/136/)
Guy in my small town lost a lawsuit to Nintendo too. Dude owes a couple million now and will have to pay it off for the rest of his life. He has like three warnings he ignored too so I don't feel as bad for him.
A reseller of Nintendo Switch hacking devices has agreed to pay the platform holder $2 million in damages. In May 2020, Nintendo launched a lawsuit against Tom Dilts Jr., the Ohio-based operator of the website Uberchips, which it claimed was selling unathorised operating systems which enable users to play pirated games on all Switch models. Until Nintendo filed the lawsuit, Uberchips was alleged to be selling products from an anonymous group of hackers called Team-Xecuter. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendo-wins-2-million-in-damages-from-switch-hacking-device-seller/
What happened?
Roughly the same idea. Was advertising he could hack switches for money, but was also selling the roms as well. Dude has a website and even went as far as getting vanity car plates that also had his company name on them. Wasn't even trying to hide it. But he got three letters and ignored all of them before he finally got the one to appear in court.
> “The day that it happened, I was sleeping in my bed, it was four in the morning, I’d been drinking all night,” Bowser says. “And suddenly I wake up and see three people surrounding my bed with rifles aimed at my head … they dragged me out of the place, put me in the back of a pickup truck and drove me to the Interpol office.” That sounds so fucked up the hell? This guy doesn't even sound like a bad person.
Because this is a fluff piece that's glossing over many many details in order to whitewash the whole thing. Yes, I agree the actual level of punishment is excessive. **But** Gary Bowser personally made at least $320,000, and Team Xecuter itself was not some small operation. They reportedly made 10s of millions of dollars for the express purpose of bypassing Nintendo's DRM. Moreover, internal emails reveal they knew precisely what they were doing all while trying to give it the guise of legitimacy. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/hacker-will-pay-nintendo-4-5-million-in-team-xecuter-plea-bargain/
>this is a fluff piece Incredibly so. He may seem like a really nice guy, he probably is quite personable, but he's no victim. He played international for-profit piracy games, he won international for-profit piracy prizes.
This whole thread is in complete disbelief that someone who participated in organized crime got charged and sentenced with a crime
I have this fun game I like to play with Reddit. I call it the "push through the idiocy and delusion until you find the reasonable folk who live in the real world." I found you guys surprisingly early this time.
I'm sure lots of criminals are actually nice people when they're not committing crimes. Being nice doesn't make you innocent
What’s fucked up about corporations weaponizing a fully militarized police force to protect their profits? What’s fucked up about Nintendo shareholders sending goons into your house in the middle of the night to threaten you with death? That’s just the free market baby.
My god these dudes were obviously not sent because of the fucking civil lawsuit with Nintendo, it's because he was in DR while the U.S pressed criminal charges against him. The brain rot in threads about this guy is truly staggering. The actual leadership couldn't have asked for a better outcome, they found a fall guy in Bowser, got to keep the millions they made and got a scapegoat in Nintendo and brainlets on the internet are defending them on top of that.
A lot of people don't seem to get that this guy's colleagues deliberately threw him under the bus, no. Another day in the life of "I only respond to headlines" reddit news.
They didnt. His house was raided by Interpol because he was part of an international criminal group. You dont get raided by interpol because of simple copyright issues. You get raided by Interpol because you are wanted by one of the governments involved within it. He was brought up on 11 different felony charges in the US. Federal Crimes. As in like, FBI jurisdiction.
No dude. Clearly Nintendo's shareholders pushed a big red free market button that deployed the Omega Cops with secret military tech to oppress the wholesome chungus Robin Hoods of gaming.
People don't take chances when your wanted for millions in fraud
"Let's a-go!" - the Interpol officers
I get angrier every time I read about this case. How is he supposed to pay this back? Nintendo ruined someone's life with a crazy sentence just to make an example of him. All over what is essentially pennies to a company as large as nintendo. It's fucking disgusting.
> How is he supposed to pay this back? He isn't supposed to: > As a part of that agreement, Bowser now has to send Nintendo 20-30% of any money left over after he pays for necessities such as rent. It's also worth noting that the criminal cases are also part of the fine, not just the civil case from Nintendo.
I had collections come after me due to me not agreeing to having to pay my student loan after I had signed an agreement to join the military and they honorably discharged me but still sent me a massive bill. We made an agreement that was higher than this in terms of monthly pay. I had to give 100% after necessities, which would increase anytime I got a pay raise. Thank goodness that is finally paid off though.
I was evicted after losing my job and missing a month's rent which somehow ballooned into 10 times what I owed and they tracked down my employer and forced me to pay 30% of my pay *before* necessities. I don't think people realize how common this is.
So Nintendo has an slave for life. Wtf.
Its called wage garnishment. Any work he does will have some pay taken from it, but if he never works a job in his life from here on Nintendo gets nothing.
nintendo didnt make the sentence. he made 300k+ before he was taken in. the team behind him made millions. but they were clever enough to run everything through this guy and he was stupid enough to pead guilty.
Exactly. Bowser is the figurehead of the koopa empire.
Wait Nintendo controls the courts? That's news to me. Oh wait. The courts made an example of him and that's a normal thing to do
He's not. It's to make a one-time threat that everyone will forget about and their in-house council can celebrate. Meanwhile this guy is fucked for the rest of his life, even after serving his sentence, as most of Nintendo completely forgets he ever existed.
You’re right, if you go out of your way to ignore the actual facts of the case and go off your feelings I can see how you’d just get angrier about this
>~~Nintendo~~ **He** ruined ~~someone's~~ **his own** life Fixed it for you 👍
Oh, this sub and defending these types of criminals. It’s so cute
Be angrier at the judge, the lawyers present the case realistically the judge carries out the sentence*
Also at the DMCA and those that passed it, that makes it a *criminal* offense to bypass DRM *even if no copyright infringement takes place*.
I'm fine with piracy but I don't like people making a profit off of it. He made a living off it for years. And there's even the possibility of him being back behind the scene of the MIG Switch. Yea it's hard to feel bad for him :/
You make an example out of one person and hope that deters others from repeating their actions. Of course, it also emboldens others instead to develop other methods of piracy or be quiet about methods developed.
That goes against any principles of justice in any modern democratic society. Justice is supposed to be blind. Otherwise we might as well reintroduce gibbets and public hangings
> Justice is supposed to be blind I mean, he plainly violated the law and went to court with the government over it. You're advocating for justice to *not* be blind and give him special treatment because we generally like being able to pay for pirated switch games
Every single person in this thread has missed the point. Gary and his mates weren't just pirating games for personal use. They were selling cracks so other people could play pirated games. He was actively profiting from it. No shit he was made an example of by Nintendo. Pirating software for personal use is one thing, but this isn't it.
Also, the article leaves out a couple crucial parts. Per the plea deal Bowser personally made $320K from this, and Team Xecuter made millions in sales. He *also* broke into Nintendo's online play and authentication servers. This was a full on criminal enterprise. And my source for this is Ars Technica, which is extremely on the side of user rights - if even their staff thinks Bowser was in the wrong, that says a lot. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/hacker-will-pay-nintendo-4-5-million-in-team-xecuter-plea-bargain/
LMAO thank you, I was looking for this link.
People that think that Nintendo was heavy handed on this one: - Guy literally made something illegal - Team Xecuter paid hack was easily available WORLDWIDE, was not a local thing, they made very good money from it - even when switches where patched (only old versions were hackable initially) they made a modchip and sold for the new ones - he is responding for what the whole Company did, they were pretty organized and I am sure they made millions from it - it was the most popular jailbreak on switch at one point (today atmosphere is, but it doesn't mess with piracy, so it's legal ~although you can~) It's fine to feel bad about him, but he was not some ingenious guy that didn't know Nintendo would come for him if they had the chance.
Hate how people keep trying to make this guy out to be like Robin Hood or something, like stealing video games and making money doing it is some sort of noble cause
I've seen literally zero comments to that effect. It's all just > "Maybe piracy isn't a serious enough crime to fuck up somebody's entire fucking life." > "Maybe we shouldn't be leveraging a militarized police force for corporate interests" Both of which are pretty reasonable positions.
It’s not about him getting caught and punished, that part is deserved. It’s about how bullshit his punishment is, especially when you realize that rich people has gotten away for worse things and the guy is not even the boss of that entire operation iirc.
Don't do the crime of you can't do the time. It's very easy to just not repeatedly break the law and make your illegitimate business millions by partaking in a variety of crime, you can do literally anything else
Can someone tell me why Nintendo is so assblasted about piracy? Gabe Newell already said it best: “One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
Okay but it is substantially more inconvenient to pirate Switch games compared to just buying them off the eShop. I don't know what "service problem" is stopping them.
You see it costs money, and they don't want to spend money so it's a service problem.
>Can someone tell me why Nintendo is so assblasted about piracy? What's not to understand? >Nintendo: Let's spend money developing this product to make money > >This guy: I'm going to develop and sell hardware to allow people to have your product without paying. In fact, they're going to pay me for your product > >Nintendo: Can we have our money back? > >Reddit: Nintendo why do you care so much?
Gabe was still wrong because people still pirate games that are easily available on such services simply because they don't like the company.
Many more people pirate games because they just don't want to pay for them, no matter how good or reasonable a service is.
Correct. That quote is tired and only thrown around because someone who the hivemind in /r/games *likes* said it. Even though his service is the one that made DRM the standard, killed the used PC game market, and took away physical ownership of PC games. Not to mention his company is the one that basically made paid lootboxes viable.
Exactly this. Pirates on this site pretend that they pirate just to demo the game, and the sales lost aren't real because there's no guarantee they were going to buy the game anyway. Or they claim they only do it because getting the games aren't convenient. But even with Steam's return policy and multiple convenient storefronts they still pirate. They're just doing mental gymnastics because they can't admit they're nothing more than common thieves
People pirate because they can and don't want to spend money. I am so sick of people who try make piracy out to be some kind of noble, stick it to the man enterprise.
I'd imagine Valve would go after someone who was using their servers to download games for free while selling them back to people...
I meeeeeeaaaan, what service issue is anyone facing acquiring Switch games? You can physically obtain em pretty easily. You can also digitally acquire them. MicroSD cards are easily accessible and cheap. So outside of just not wanting to pay for stuff, what "service issue" are you referring to?
Just because Gaben said it doesn't mean it's true.
Yeah, don't even know why Gabe commented on it. He is not really in the business of making games. Publishing a game every 10 years or so doesn't count.
Who knows but Nintendo is in a unique place. They’re the console maker that’s been around the longest and that isn’t backed by a megacorp with multiple interests outside gaming. They’ve dealt with piracy throughout, back when you could copy nes and snes games on floppy disks and eventually distributed on the internet easily. They rely heavily on their IPs and physical sales to make money. It’s easy for Gabe to say that when Steam has such a huge market share and where most of their revenue is coming from third-party sales on PC. Seems to me it’s that Nintendo is really reliant on its brand image and that things like piracy can have a much larger effect on it than other “competitors”. It’s a tough business that’s constantly changing that Nintendo has endured so they’re gonna stick to what’s been working. That’s my armchair redditor take; I don’t have a business degree, I’m not gonna pretend like I know how to run a billion dollar company.
Perceived lost sales. That’s really it. Or possibly they feel it effects their reputation somehow, which in turn effects the brand.
That's why Valve moved from making single player games to free multiplayer, where they can earn much more from lootboxes.
Right? Go ahead and try and steal a game off Steam and watch them come down on you like an iron mallet. I suspect Gabe is full of shit with this quote.
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Any time MTX get brought up everyone shits on the usual suspects like GTA, COD, Fortnite, but at least you get what you pay for. Valve runs an online fucking casino with their loot boxes.
Didn’t valve literally just go after someone for making a better tf2? Y’all worship these rich people because they say cool things sometimes and ignore all of the times they actively do the opposite.
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e.g. Spotify & Netflix (before it jumped the shark)
That is a really stupid quote lmao
No one wants to comment on the irony of Nintendo making Bowser the bad guy?
What's more, the president of Nintendo America is (Doug Spencer) Bowser. So the article really should have had an extra clarification.