Nintendo won $4.5 million in damages against James Williams, known as Archbox, in a Switch game piracy case. A federal court in Washington state issued a default judgment and also ordered the closure of online stores accused of distributing pirated copies, it was reported. Aftermath.
Reddit moderator owes Nintendo $4.5 million
Nintendo attacked James Williams in June 2024, accusing him of running several stores offering extensive catalogs of pirated Nintendo Switch games. The company also accused him of using his position as a moderator on the r/SwitchPirates subreddit to promote these services and facilitate the distribution of unauthorized copies.
The default judgment is due to James Williams’ failure to respond to court proceedings. Nintendo had requested the $4.5 million in October 2025 after this absence and the court finally awarded this sum, calculated from 30 copyrighted games, with $150,000 in damages for each.
The court also orders James Williams to immediately disable online stores he operates or controls that offer libraries of pirated Switch games. The court order also targets the social media accounts used to distribute the content in question.
A new step in Nintendo’s fight against piracy
Nintendo had identified James Williams as one of the main moderators of r/SwitchPirates, a community that then had almost 190,000 members. According to the complaint, he has posted thousands of comments and messages since 2019 and played a central role in several stores offering pirated games.
Notably, the company managed to link Archbox’s identity to a Nintendo account used to request hardware repair. This information allowed the company behind Mario and Zelda to find your address and send you a formal notice before starting the procedure.
This decision comes after several procedures targeting the piracy ecosystem on Switch. In September, a Dutch court banned the sale of the MIG Switch, making it possible to bypass the console’s protections and play unauthorized copies of games.
The James Williams/Archbox file also illustrates Nintendo’s strategy targeting different links in the chain, from sellers of circumvention equipment to platforms and people accused of distributing the games. However, in the absence of the defense of James Williams, the court handed down a judgment by default, which distinguishes this decision from a contradictory judgment in which the arguments of both parties have been examined.
