Stephen Totilo reports that Nintendo hired a law firm to track down a prolific pirate sellings copies of its games online, and is now suing the alleged bootlegger, who goes by the name Archbox on the 'net.
Some of those details were revealed in court filings from Nintendo last week and are being reported for the first time in Game File. Here's how they say they did it: In 2023, Nintendo hired the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp to investigate "freeshops," or online stores for pirated Switch games.The firm zeroed in on someone called Archbox and noticed online postings that suggested Archbox lived near Phoenix, Arizona and had attended Midwestern University.One particularly useful post: In 2015, a reddit user called "archbox" who had posted to a "SwitchPirates" community using a turtle avatar had posted to the r/phoenix subreddit stating that "Midwestern University has an optometry clinic that is very good. You get examined by a student and then by the doctor."
If going from consuming bootlegged software to selling it seems a bad idea, to do it right under the nose of Nintendo seems a much worse one. From the filing it made comically short work of his opsec.
Previously:
• My daughter and I share a Nintendo Switch
• Thoughts on the Nintendo Switch from a Gameboy aficionado
• Review: Wasteland 2 for Nintendo Switch
