Back in February, we saw reports of a man getting arrested in Japan for selling hacked Pokemon for the franchise’s latest instalments. More recently, someone just got caught doing something similar, but for another Nintendo IP. Said person was caught selling modded save files for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The Broadcasting System of Niigata reports that a Tokyo resident was detained on 8 July for said offence. Originally, the modded save data was put up in an auction site in April for JPY3500 (~RM133). The listing was dubbed “the strongest software”, with boosted stats and rare items that would be tricky to obtain via normal gameplay.
Though the person was caught selling modded save files for Breath of the Wild, it wasn’t the only game he was modding saves for. The report states that he also admitted to doing the same for other games, earning JPY10 million (~RM380000) since December 2019.
The man is charged under Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention law, under which modding of save files isn’t illegal. But it immediately steps outside legal realms once the modded save files start going on sale. And as we saw previously, Nintendo is very quick to take action when it comes to its own IPs.
