Nintendo suing two individuals for copyright infringement (UPDATE)

Nintendo has been involved with a series of lawsuits recently, and they’ve come away the winner in just about all of them. Those lawsuits have involved modders and hackers, and the latest legal attack is more of the same.

This time around, Nintendo is going after two individuals; “Modded Hardware” and “Archbox.” The grounds this time is copyright infringement, but as you probably guessed, it has to do with hacks and mods related to the Switch.

In particular, the parties mentioned above are involved with the sales of MIG Switch devices, console mods, services for modding, and more. Along with that, these outfits also include pirated games with a number of the devices they sell/mods they offer. While Nintendo might have had an issue going after some of the mods themselves, they should have a slam-dunk case when lumping in the pirated games.

News of these lawsuits no doubt go hand-in hand with the MIG Switch site going offline just yesterday. If this lawsuit plays out how others have in recent months, the parties named are likely in for an open-and-shut legal battle, considerable fines, and potential time behind bars.

UPDATE: Some new insight has been shared on Nintendo’s lawsuits against these two individuals, and it seems Nintendo gave both of them the chance to reverse course before jumping to legal action.

In the case of the owner of Modded Hardware, Nintendo apparently contacted the person behind the store and asked them to shut it down. The owner agreed, only to never follow through with the closure. This is when Nintendo moved on to legal action.

With Archbox, Nintendo sent the individual cease-and-desist notices in March, but the individual continued promoting piracy anyway. At the same time, Archbox was trying to scrub his online history that showed his various promotions of/efforts in spreading piracy. Seeing this, Nintendo made the move to legal action.