Key Takeaways
- Nintendo is suing a Colorado resident for streaming pirated copies of Switch games.
- The company claims that the content creator streamed footage from unreleased Switch games on over 50 occasions since 2022, and even went as far as to taunt Nintendo after some of his channels were taken down.
- Nintendo is seeking over $7.5 million in damages.
Nintendo is suing a small content creator who allegedly spent months live-streaming pirated Switch games before their street date. Aside from sharing unauthorized footage from the likes of Mario and Luigi: Brothership and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the streamer even taunted the Japanese gaming giant’s legal team.
The Switch was first jailbroken in 2018, shortly following its one-year release anniversary, thanks to a physical vulnerability that has since been patched. This accelerated the development of the console’s emulators, and made it easy for pirates to disseminate Switch games even before their official release, according to some legal arguments Nintendo has made in the past.
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Some of these claims have now been repeated in a new lawsuit that Nintendo filed against Jesse Keighin, a Colorado resident operating a number of social media channels called Every Game Guru. The complaint, filed in a Colorado federal court on November 6 and first spotted by 404 Media, claims that Keighin has repeatedly violated Nintendo’s copyright by live-streaming unreleased Switch games. He continued to do so even after the company’s attorneys filed “dozens” of copyright takedown notices, and has overall leaked ten Switch games on more than 50 occasions since 2022, Nintendo claims.
Streamer Taunted Nintendo’s Legal Team After Getting His Content Taken Down
After this game of cat and mouse had already been going on for a while, Keighin even decided to taunt the Switch maker. “Defendant also emailed Nintendo stating that he had ‘a thousand burner channels’ and that he can ‘do this all day,'” the complaint reads. In one of his most recent broadcasts, Keighin streamed Super Mario Party Jamboree via Kick at least six days ahead of the game’s official release on October 17, Nintendo claims. The company says it also found evidence of him streaming a leaked version of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom via YouTube on September 21, five days before that title officially hit digital and physical store shelves.
Defendant also emailed Nintendo stating that he had ‘a thousand burner channels’ and that he can ‘do this all day.’
Every Game Guru Was Allegedly Profiting From His Illegal Streams
Nintendo claims that Keighin was mostly streaming pirated copies of its games that were played via an emulator. On top of that, he is accused of sharing links to Switch emulators like Yuzu and Ryujinx as part of his streams, which Nintendo sees as an act of actively promoting piracy. The gaming giant said that after it got Keighin’s monetized YouTube channel with roughly 1,730 subscribers taken down, the content creator started including a CashApp handle in his streams, signaling that he remained adamant to continue profiting from live-streaming pirated Switch games.
Nintendo’s Now Seeking Millions in Damages
Nintendo is seeking $150,000 for every instance of copyright infringement that Keighin is found to be guilty of. Since the plaintiff claims that the defendant streamed unreleased Switch games on over 50 occasions, this would suggest that the total damages it’s demanding exceed $7.5 million.
Source: Nintendo [PDF]
Nintendo
- Date Founded
- September 23, 1889
- Headquarters
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- Parent Company
- Nintendo