Nintendo recently won another lawsuit, this time against a Switch modder who made the unbelievably silly decision to represent themself. The modder now has to pay US$2 million (~RM8.43 million) to the gaming brand.
The case goes back to July 2024, when Nintendo filed a lawsuit in the US state of Washington against Ryan Daly, operator of the Switch modding outfit, Modded Hardware. The scenario is, at least in the company’s case, par for the course: the world’s most litigious gaming company accused Daly of piracy, and gave him a warning to shut down his operations back in March that year. Daly, of course, ignored those warnings, which inevitably led to an escalation in the lawsuit.
As per our title, Daly did the unthinkable and decided that he’d save a few Ringgit by not hiring a lawyer, deciding to represent himself. In court, he denied Nintendo’s accusation of trafficking hacked hardware, along with the implication that he sold hardware pre-loaded with pirated games. In his defense, Daly argued everything from fair use allowance to invalid copyrights.
Again, when going up against a team of highly skilled and probably ridiculously well paid lawyers, Daly’s efforts were all for nought. Ultimately, the Washington court ruled in Nintendo’s favour, finding that Modded Hardware was selling piracy-enabling devices, hacked consoles, as well as mod chips that cause “significant and irreparable harm” to the company.
In addition to the US$2 million, Nintendo also wants Daly to shut down the Modded Hardware website, and hand over the domain to Nintendo. Further, he cannot share documentation or information on how he modded the Switch console.
A more vindictive and litigious gaming company that pursues piracy and pirates like Nintendo, there is not. The company has thrown the full weight of the law against such actors, with the most recent incident involving a Japanese man who was arrested for selling modded Switch consoles.
(Source: GamesRadar, Engadget)
