Nintendo Wins $4.5 Million Piracy Lawsuit Against r/SwitchPirates Mod Archbox

Nintendo has won its piracy lawsuit against James “Archbox” Williams. A Washington federal court has ordered the former r/SwitchPirates moderator to pay Nintendo $4.5 million in damages, and the default judgment includes a permanent injunction that bars him from distributing pirated games and circumvention tools, or encouraging others to use them.

The case never went to trial. Williams did not answer the lawsuit, so the court ruled for Nintendo by default.

Nintendo Archbox lawsuit: quick facts

What the court decided

Judge King granted Nintendo’s motion in full. She stressed that Williams was aware of the case, since he hired a lawyer to object to a Google subpoena, but he still failed to answer the complaint.

His Reddit posts were also used against him. In one post cited in the order, Williams called himself a pirate who would not pay Nintendo $50 for a game. The judge said posts like this showed the infringement was willful and found the award appropriate partly as punishment, writing that “Williams’ egregious infringement activities merit substantial punishment here.”

You can read Judge King’s order granting default judgment in full.

Why Nintendo was awarded $4.5 million

Under the US Copyright Act’s statutory damages rules, a rights holder does not have to prove exact losses. A copyright owner can ask for statutory damages of up to $30,000 per infringement, or up to $150,000 if the infringement is shown to be willful.

Nintendo asked for the statutory maximum for 30 games, including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The judge agreed, reasoning that lost sales for each game could easily reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, so the request was “not an unrealistic estimate”.

Nintendo did not request DMCA damages or attorneys’ fees, and the judge noted this worked in favor of granting the maximum infringement damages.

What Nintendo accused Archbox of doing

Nintendo filed the lawsuit in June 2024. It named three pirate shops, Jack-in-the-Shop, Turtle in the Shop and NekoDrive, which all shut down after a Nintendo cease and desist letter in March 2024. A fourth shop, LiberaShop, closed shortly after the complaint was filed.

The complaint also said Williams:

• Helped people get and use circumvention software such as Signature Patches (Sigpatches) to run pirated games
• Acted as a leading moderator of the SwitchPirates subreddit, which grew to 190,000 members
• Asked users for Nintendo eShop gift card “donations” so he could buy more Switch games to pirate
• Was the main representative of Missing Dumps, a group that collected eShop gift cards to buy games not yet available in pirate shops

Some of the shops offered “Pro” tiers in exchange for eShop gift cards, giving access to games that were not publicly listed.

How Nintendo tracked him down

According to a Game File report, Nintendo found Williams after he sent a Switch console in for repair. He had posted that he lived near Phoenix, Arizona, and once his shipping address showed up in Nintendo’s customer service system, the company’s lawyers could locate him and serve legal papers.

What the permanent injunction covers

The injunction bans Williams from distributing any pirated Nintendo game, not only the 30 listed titles, along with any software that bypasses protections on Nintendo games and consoles. He must also disable his pirate shops and the accounts used to promote them, including his Reddit account and accounts on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord and Telegram.

In practice, little remains online. The “archbox” Reddit account had already been deleted by its owner, and most of the shops shut down after the March 2024 cease and desist letter.

Will Nintendo actually get paid?

That is still unclear. TorrentFreak reports that recovering the $4.5 million will likely be hard, especially with an unresponsive defendant. Because Williams did not respond, the court accepted the complaint’s allegations as true, so none of the legal claims were tested.

How the Archbox case compares with other Nintendo piracy lawsuits

Nintendo has pursued several piracy cases in US courts over the past five years. The Archbox ruling sits in the middle of that range.

Bowser agreed to pay $10 million and halt his piracy activity to end Nintendo’s suit over Team Xecuter’s SX OS. RomUniverse’s owner was ordered to pay $35,000 for each of 49 Nintendo games plus trademark damages, a total of $2,115,000. Yuzu’s creator agreed to pay $2.4 million and shut down the emulator. The Modded Hardware lawsuit was filed on the same day as the Archbox case and ended when its operator agreed to a $2 million judgment.

The lawsuit focused on the original Switch library, even as Nintendo moves its players on to new hardware. The original Nintendo Switch is being discontinued in Europe, and Nintendo has also raised Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch Online prices this year, including a confirmed Switch 2 price increase in the UK.

FAQs

Who is Archbox? Archbox is the online name of James C. Williams, an Arizona resident and former moderator of the r/SwitchPirates subreddit.

How much does Archbox owe Nintendo? $4.5 million, calculated as $150,000 for each of 30 Nintendo Switch games.

What is a default judgment? It is a ruling made when a defendant does not respond to a lawsuit. The court accepts the plaintiff’s claims as true and no trial takes place.

Which games were part of the case? The 30 titles include The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Did Archbox go to jail? No. This was a civil copyright case, so the outcome is financial damages and a court order, not a criminal sentence.