Last year saw the arrest of two members of Team Xecuter, the hacking group behind the infamous SX OS. MaxConsole administrator and GBAtemp user GaryOPA was a part of that, and was extradited from Canada to the United States, where he would face charges. While he initially claimed he was innocent, the opposing prosecution did not accept the defense of SX OS merely allowing Nintendo Switch users to play homebrew software, and asserted that the main goal of Team Xecuter's exploit was to play pirated copies of games.

Faced with 11 felony counts, Bowser has just pleaded guilty to two of them: trafficking in circumvention devices and conspiracy to circumvent technological measures. According to the court, Team Xecuter has caused an estimated number between $65 million to $150 million in losses to video game companies.

This means that Bowser will not have to go to trial, with the plea deal also waiving the other 9 criminal charges. Despite that, he still may face prison time, and as part of the deal, has agreed to pay Nintendo for restitution, to the tune of $4.5 million. Bowser will also have to consent to the destruction or give up the technology seized from his home during his arrest, which includes around 30TB of hard drives, micro SDs, and flash drives, along with laptops, phones, modchips, and hacked game consoles.

Source

 

[digipimp75]

i'm sure Nintendo will use that money to improve their shitty online service.... right?

 

[Deleted member 668561]

I'm scum for buying an SX Core to write homebrew on my Mariko?

No, but they have a right to protect what is legally theirs,


you agreed to the terms

 

[mikefor20]

Not complying with gpl had directly infringed the users rights to access the source too, so it affected the people complainig directly. As a dev I also couldn't really recommend sxos with a good conscience because of this, and all they had to do to prevent this would have been to give credit and release parts of their firmware as open source, that wheren't even core parts of why users used sxos, and all that while finanzially profiting of it.

I really liked their rcm dongle, I use it till this day to inject a payload and boot hekate. And their modchip also wasn't bad, as far as I know, but still I couldn't overlook the other problems, so I only recomended their stuff, when there was no other way, and with a footnote about what they were doing.

Doesn't change the fact that 99.9% of the people complaining are just following the leader. They are all sharing a brain.

 

[sod125]

Why are people grateful to this guy? The real work was done by their hackers and he wasn't even the head of the whole enterprise, it was all Max.

That's one hell of a deal! 4.5 mils can Max cover for him without issues.

What if Max decides to throw him under the bus and walks free again? Like, how many times has he gotten in trouble with Nintendo in the past, must be like third time by now? Looks like he might want to retire from his criminal career after this one though.

 

[KirovAir]

People who are celebrating this should really wake up. This is a big loss to device freedom and being able to do with your device what you want.
This is an 'extreme' case with piracy in mind of course for TX, but TX themselves did not pirate all those games, the users did. It's like selling a knife and complaining people are stabbing with it. I understand the trail, I understand why Ninty is going after them but the jail time and fine is WAY out of proportion. They can only go after the copyright violation for the gamecard loading code, but not the actual lost sales imho. TX are money grabbing assholes who violate any sense of copyright. But 5 years for the fucking news guy and possible 20 for the others? Lolwat

This case can be used as an example to go after SciresM or Atmoshpere-like solutions in the future.

 

[Dud]

He should have saw it coming.

 

[CompSciOrBust]

No, but they have a right to protect what is legally theirs,


you agreed to the terms

The guy I replied to said that people buying from Gary Bowser are Scum. I bought an SX Core with the sole intention of using my V2 Switch for developing homebrew. So my question to the person who I replied to (@spotanjo3 ) is am I scum?

Edit: Y'all can say what you want about TX but if it wasn't for TX the only hackable switches today would be the unpatched V1s. Now every version can be hacked and used for homebrew. It really isn't just piracy.

 

[pwjpssdfvqyuhweuxx]

hahahahaha

 

[Spider_Man]

Hypocritical ingrates. This whole time they reap the rewards but condemn the man. There's no getting through to them with logic. They're all sharing a brain. Wait a minute. You're one of the worst ones. Way to flip sides. Even worse.

and where have i flipped sides?

where do i show disrespect to those that bring us hacks/exploits?

 

[RednaxelaNnamtra]

A crime is a crime. SX OS never really shied away from being blatantly able to use "backups", and most of the homebrew was specifically for backups.

That's not to say I don't think SX OS was real neato, but if anyone expected Gary to get out of this without any charges or wallet-destroying damage payments, or on the basis of being free to do whatever you want to hardware, you'd be crazy. He's lucky they dropped the laundering stuff.

Didn't they even try to create a subscription for pirated switch games at some point? Thats as far away from legal gray area and backups as they could be, they didn't even try to look non piracy xD

 

[Deleted member 668561]

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Didn't they even try to create a subscription for pirated switch games at some point? Thats as far away from legal gray area and backups as they could be, they didn't even try to look non piracy xD

That was completely unrelated to TX. Someone copied what HBG was doing and stuck it behind a paywall. There is absolutely zero evidence that TX was behind it. Sure Gary reported on it but Gary reported on lots of things, the Rebug Switch Me modchip for example, that doesn't make Gary a part of Team Rebug. For all we know the HWFly people were behind StargateNX

 

[smf]

By pleading guilty instead of being found guilty or not guilty at trial, the court doesn't have to articulate its reasoning behind it's ruling. So in that way precedence wasn't set because we don't know how the court will rule.

Sure, there are a lot of truly innocent people who plead guilty because they know the court will convict them and a plea deal is their only option.

But Gary was actually guilty of the actions he was accused of, I don't think there was any doubt about that.

The DMCA isn't new, whether it's legal to sell circumvention devices for consoles has been repeatedly discussed in court. I'm not sure another case will change how the courts have viewed it in the past.

 

[lordhell]

He made modchips/hacks for self profit, good luck on jail!

 

[The Catboy]

Team Xecuter is still not done yet, just you all wait and see! We are gonnna have an SXOS update any minute now! /s

 

[Kioku]

People who are celebrating this should really wake up. This is a big loss to device freedom and being able to do with your device what you want.
This is an 'extreme' case with piracy in mind of course for TX, but TX themselves did not pirate all those games, the users did. It's like selling a knife and complaining people are stabbing with it. I understand the trail, I understand why Ninty is going after them but the jail time and fine is WAY out of proportion. They can only go after the copyright violation for the gamecard loading code, but not the actual lost sales imho. TX are money grabbing assholes who violate any sense of copyright. But 5 years for the fucking news guy and possible 20 for the others? Lolwat

This case can be used as an example to go after SciresM or Atmoshpere-like solutions in the future.

The knife didn't violate and circumvent copyright laws. So...

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Why are people grateful to this guy? The real work was done by their hackers and he wasn't even the head of the whole enterprise, it was all Max.



What if Max decides to throw him under the bus and walks free again? Like, how many times has he gotten in trouble with Nintendo in the past, must be like third time by now? Looks like he might want to retire from his criminal career after this one though.

I don't know the extent of Gary's involvement in TX and he never mentioned developing the hardware to me but Gary was a talented electrical engineer with an honorary degree from Princeton. Gary might not have developed SX Core but I'm sure he could have if he wanted to.

As for Max, he is free because his lawyer stopped him from being extradited to America and once in France he was safe because France is in favor of consumer rights.

 

[WesMods]

He's facing up to 5 years on the plea deal and his co-conspirators are facing up to 20. Always good to see scum brought to justice. Enjoy your time in prison, Gary!

Calling someone scum and wishing bad things on him really says a lot about you. This guy is no more a pirate then any of us onthis site. Shame on any of you who frequent this site which is built on the technology and software used to make piracy a possibility for all of us. TeamXecuter has been around for 20 years helping people like us have fun and now he gets to pay the price while we all sit home nice and comfy.

 

[Stealphie]

Fuck xecuter but guys this isn't a good thing

 

[Clydefrosch]

It's all cancel culture. Social or software. Jumping on the bandwagon and canceling someone or something because its the thing to do. SXOS didn't steal YOUR code. How is it not the exact same thing?

Software Justice Wankers.

they stole open source codeand sold it as closed source, they added brick code for fun at some point, the reason they were hated by some wasn't cancel culture, it was what they did to make money.