Court orders Switch pirate Archbox to pay Nintendo US$4.5 million
A United States court has ordered James Williams, known online as Archbox, to pay Nintendo US$4.5 million for copying and distributing pirated Nintendo Switch games. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington granted Nintendo's motion for default judgment in full. That is an order made when a defendant does not take part in the case. Video Games Chronicle
U.S. District Judge Lauren King ruled that Williams was fully aware of the lawsuit and could not claim ignorance. Nintendo filed the case in 2024 and later asked for default judgment after he failed to respond. He had at one point hired a lawyer to object to a Google subpoena connected to the case.
Nintendo described Williams as a leading, if not primary, moderator of the SwitchPirates group on Reddit, the message board organised around shared interests. The group grew to 190,000 members. Williams posted thousands of messages there, including requests for donations of Nintendo eShop gift cards to buy more Switch games to pirate.
Nintendo claimed that since 2019 Williams had owned, managed, operated or overseen several online Pirate Shops. These were websites offering pirated Switch games for free download. Nintendo said he operated, owned or administered at least four such shops.
He was also, Nintendo said, the primary representative and only lead member of Missing Dumps, an online community focused on collecting eShop gift cards to buy games that had not yet been pirated and fill gaps in those shops. Some of the games at issue were described as Switch ROMs, digital copies of game files that can be played without the original cartridge or authorised download. The plaintiff awarded the damages was identified as Nintendo of America. Aftermath
The US$4.5 million total was calculated at US$150,000 for each of 30 Switch titles Nintendo said Williams distributed. Nintendo had earlier argued that the figure is "nowhere near an amount that would compensate for the seriousness" of his conduct. IGN
The case was one of two piracy lawsuits Nintendo filed in a Washington federal court, with the other aimed at an operation known as Modded Hardware. TorrentFreak The Williams ruling closes a court action that ran from filing in 2024 to judgment reported on 25 September 2026.
