Nintendo Wins Legal Battle Against Switch Game Piracy Devices

Nintendo has won a major legal victory aimed at blocking the sale of devices that enable Switch game piracy.

The Mario maker has been waging war on the makers of these devices and those who use them over the past few years, and has now turned its attention to the websites that sell them to European customers. Indeed, Nintendo recently took the matter to The District Court of The Hague (note: this is separate to the Hague’s International Criminal Court that deals with war criminals) to get their sale deemed unlawful.

Commonly marketed as the MIG Switch, these devices can circumvent Nintendo’s anti-piracy measures and play illegal copies of games downloaded from the internet. Nintendo made headlines last year after it began penalizing players who had used these devices on their consoles, disabling the machines’ online functionality.

This new ruling makes it unlawful to sell the MIG Switch and similar devices in Europe in the first place, and specifically names a set of websites where they could be purchased previously. These sites must now cease offering the devices, the court has ordered.

In a statement to press, Nintendo said it had launched this legal action not just to protect its own intellectual property, but also “on behalf of the many video game developers globally that depend on legitimate sales of Nintendo video games.

“Nintendo promotes and fosters game development and creativity and strongly supports the game developers who legitimately create new and innovative games,” the company concluded, before issuing a warning directly to fans who might use them:

“Nintendo’s message to players is to avoid purchasing or using circumvention devices, circumvention software or unauthorised copies of video games, as this increases the risk of interfering with the functionality and experience provided by authentic Nintendo game consoles, video games and systems.”

This is, of course, far from the first time that Nintendo has initiated legal action to stop the sale of piracy-enabling devices. Last year, a Nintendo console modder who refused to shut down his business — and who then attempted to defend himself without a lawyer — was ordered to pay $2 million by Nintendo. And then there’s the infamous case of Gary Bowser, an employee of a company that sold anti-piracy devices, who served time in jail and was ordered to pay $14.5m in damages, a debt he’s said he will now repay for the rest of his life.