While it’s easy to assume that posting on Reddit provides a blanket of anonymity, don’t forget that we leave a digital footprint on almost everything, and one person found that out the hard way.
Back in June,Nintendosued an individual with the nickname"Archbox" for allegedly selling pirated copies of Nintendo Switch software. In 2023, Nintendo hired the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp to investigate “free shops” or online stores that sell pirated Switch software. The details regarding the court case have since surfaced (thanks toGame File), and they explain how Nintendo managed to find the individual.
Nintendo Connects Archbox To Their Real Name And Location Thanks To Reddit
The law firm Nintendo hired found that Archbox was someone living in Phoenix, Arizona and attended Midwester University. In 2015, a Reddit account with the name “archbox” posted on the r/SwitchPirates subreddit, also posted in the r/phoenix subreddit, stating, “Midwestern University has an optometry clinic that is very good. You get examined by a student and then by the doctor.”
This led to the firm and Nintendo deducing that archbox is James Williams, though how they did that exactly hasn’t been revealed. Nintendo’s lawyers said in a filing last week that “in or about February 2024 plaintiff [Nintendo] succeeded in linking “Archbox” with at least two Nintendo accounts for an individual named James Williams.” In addition to that, in a related filing, a Nintendo employee who works in Nintendo’s Product Lifecycle Management group mentioned that in February 2024. Nintendo had “tentatively” identified archbox as James Williams.
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Nintendo even had two email addresses for James Williams in Arizona. When a Nintendo employee entered the info into Nintendo’s system for tracking repairs, they found two repair orders from James Williams with an Arizona shipping address, confirming that the alleged software pirate requested repairs from Nintendo.
The House of Mario then sent a cease-and-desist letter that Williams signed via FedEx. Williams allegedly emailed Nintendo’s lawyers, saying he would “comply and cooperate with any demands or requests…within [his] control.”
This is an excellent example of how you’re not as anonymous as you think when using platforms such as Reddit and any other place where you need to register to post. We here at DualShockers, of course, don’t condone software piracy and think Nintendo is within its rights to do what it did to stop the individual from allegedly selling pirated Nintendo products.
Will the Switch’s successor have better safeguards for jailbreakers to prevent piracy? While we can’t say for now, it’s only a matter of time until whatever safeguard is there gets cracked, which is the case for almost every console released so far.
No word yet on what the official name of the Switch 2 will be or when it’ll be announced,but Nintendo did confirmit will feature backwards-compatibility with existing Switch games.
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