Video game piracy has entered a new era with the first-ever arrest in Japan of an individual accused of modifying Nintendo Switch hardware. On January 15, a 58-year-old man was apprehended on suspicion of violating the Trademark Act by altering Switch consoles to run pirated games and then selling them. This involved welding modified parts onto the circuit boards of second-hand consoles, enabling them to play 27 illegally accessed games. These modified consoles were sold for ¥28,000 (approximately $180) each. The suspect has confessed to the charges and is under further investigation for potential additional violations.
Nintendo has been actively combating piracy, as evidenced by a takedown request in May 2024 targeting 8,500 copies of the Switch emulator Yuzu, following the emulator's removal two months earlier. The lawsuit against Yuzu's creator, Tropic Haze, highlighted that Nintendo's flagship title, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was pirated over one million times before its official release in 2023. Legal actions against piracy are increasingly common, with successful lawsuits against the game file-sharing site RomUniverse resulting in damages of $2.1 million in 2021 and over $12 million in 2018. Additionally, Nintendo blocked the GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin from being released on the PC gaming platform Steam.
This week, a patent lawyer representing Nintendo shed light on the company's stance on piracy and emulation. Koji Nishiura, Assistant Manager of Nintendo's Intellectual Property Division, addressed the legality of emulators, stating, "To begin with, are emulators illegal or not? This is a point often debated. While you can’t immediately claim that an emulator is illegal in itself, it can become illegal depending on how it’s used."
