Nintendo's crusade against emulators continues, with a serious lawsuit being filed against a Twitch streamer who continually played and livestreamed footage of leaked copies of Nintendo Switch games. A copy of the legal proceedings, acquired by news site TorrentFreak, details five different charges pressed to one Jesse Keighin, who uses the handle EveryGameGuru. Keighin had multiple channels and outlets where they were posting videos and streams of gameplay from at least ten Switch titles, all of which had been leaked and made available online prior to their release dates.

These charges are serious, and go beyond just streaming the games, as well.

Defendant is a recidivist pirate who has obtained and streamed Nintendo’s leaked games on multiple occasions. Leaked games (sometimes referred to as ‘prerelease games’) are copyrighted video games which Nintendo has not yet publicly released.

Since these games were not officially released at the time of the footage being taken, Nintendo alleges that these copies that Keighin was playing were pirated, and thus obtained illegally. Instructions on how to find the NSP/XCI files of leaked games were included in the streams, which would also mean the facilitation of piracy. On top of that, both Yuzu and Ryujinx have ended development, rendering the emulators "illegal software", and thus another crime. Continuing on, promoting illegal circumvention tools is a violation. Finally, distributing the prod.keys file allowing for running these pre-release leaks is the final charge, totaling the offenses at five.

For the first two charges, Nintendo is seeking $150,000 in damages for each instance of copyright infringement, and the third through fifth charges are fined at $2,500 per violation, per crime. In total, Nintendo is seeking a $2.4 million dollar settlement altogether.

Source

 

[BlusterBong]

Not to mention, as I said above, risking setting legal precedents that could impact emulators and actual legal game preservation efforts way more than today's pirating culture already does.

funny you mention the government potentially getting involved considering what happened two weeks ago.... I wonder the kind of attitude in terms of piracy and the insistence on being right about it and the company is leading us to

 

[Blasingame]

Some possible pieces of evidence that would make this a slam dunk for N's legal team...

The video/stream predates the actual release date
The streamer, in question, is not on a approved list of organizations/persons that received early copies for review
The streamer's copy of the game linked to a distributor/retail indicating a theft
The streamer being linked to an unauthorized distributor

 

[ChibiMofo]

"On top of that, both Yuzu and Ryujinx have ended development, rendering the emulators "illegal software", and thus another crime."

I do not agree with that and do not believe Nintendo could possibly win on that particular count.

"Finally, distributing the prod.keys file allowing for running these pre-release leaks is the final charge, totaling the offenses at five."

That, on the other hand, is the most serious charge of all. If he did that, he flat out deserves what is coming.

That said, the resulting press release stating that he agrees to pay $2.4M in damages will be just like the other ones: Nintendo lying about a payment they never expect to receive in a press release designed to scare others. Unless of course this guy is dumb enough to fight it in court. Then there will be a real judgement against him.

Meanwhile I continue to enjoy playing all the latest Nintendo releases on my PC without ever owning anything more recent than a 2012 Wii U and a 2016 3DS. So sue me.

 

[BraveDragonWolf]

Nothing new under the sun...

 

[samcambolt270]

Unless, of course, they can argue that the streamer was complicit in guiding others on how to pirate games, which could make the stream liable of facilitation of piracy (one of the charges noted in this article) as the pirates he allegedly got pirated copies of the games early through. Meaning that, if proven true, the streamer would be liable for way more damage than "the one that was pirated".

Sure, but that wasn't speculated in the message I was replying to. Even if that was their argument, though, they still wouldn't have 2.4 million dollars in damages as there is no way they could have to prove that somehow, the tiny number of viewers he had all also pirated the game and then told 40 thousand other people to also pirate the game (which all of them must have done) XD

 

[Ligeia]

The streamer was stupid but Nintendo's hostility and greediness is insane, fuck them. I hope I live to see the day they go bankrupt.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

Oh wow. Looking through the lawsuit document, and they've got screenshots and evidence from more or less everywhere dating back to at least the last two years. Not just the streams, but also messages through Discord, YouTube comments, Facebook, and other sites with the streamer not only publicly sharing links to the emulators, prod.keys, and ROM sites, but also deliberately taunting Nintendo by saying stuff like "can't wait for more new games to stream and give away for free". And Nintendo expects to find even more during the discovery portion of the case. Yeah, I can already tell that Nintendo's put together quite the case here that could indeed make the streamer liable to $2.4m USD in damages, and the streamer willfully dug himself into quite the hole.

And just to clear stuff up, just because his subscriber numbers on YouTube and Twitch were low...doesn't mean that there weren't still a bunch of unsubscribed people viewing not only the streams (I should know - I'm not subscribed to Bandai Namco's official channels, but could still watch a couple live streams for Dragon Ball: The Breakers announcements) but also viewing the comments channel posts with the links (the latter of which wouldn't affect viewer numbers if people went straight to the channel through search/bookmark instead of clicking into the channel from a video). You don't have to subscribe to access publicly-posted information - only if the streamer/YouTuber shares such things exclusively to subscribers.

 

[BlueFox gui]

this guy is kinda stupid tbh, but hey, nintendo just saved 2 cents guys, they recovered lost money! thank god they were probably starving already

 

[TheZander]

About time, but fees are not enough. These pirates should be behind bars.

 

[Retrojunkies]

And this is why nintendo allow their games to get leaked way ahead of its launch date.

Funny since when did software no longer supported make it "illegal", fucking make any shit up these days, so my windows xp is illegal then?

Nintendo love this law corruption, gets to rake in millions when it'll likely cost fuck all really to keep recycling the same shit.

So if the game was to flop, its made profit without having to sell a single copy.

 

[MissingN0pe]

Yeah not going to side with the poor content creator this time. Dude seems like a complete idiot

 

[BlusterBong]

And this is why nintendo allow their games to get leaked way ahead of its launch date.

Funny since when did software no longer supported make it "illegal", fucking make any shit up these days, so my windows xp is illegal then?

Nintendo love this law corruption, gets to rake in millions when it'll likely cost fuck all really to keep recycling the same shit.

So if the game was to flop, its made profit without having to sell a single copy.

Just wait untill you read the actual docs from the lawsuit as found from the last page or two.


Here's you a sampler from it, with the worst example seen here (all links in the screenshot in the screenshot I manually censored just to be on the safe side and not get this site on the chopping block.)

 

[RedColoredStars]

Based on the screenshots Nintendo put in their lawsuit it shows that the guy only had 52 subscribers on YouTube and 15 followers on Twitch. The amount they are seeking for allegedly damage is just absurd.

Subscribers and followers does not = total number of views.

 

[kijetesantakalu042]

Subscribers and followers does not = total number of views.

It still correlates

 

[DJPlace]

wow i streamed swtich emulation once with a 3rd party game... will the big N go after me? (that was years ago btw) i'm still here.
also i'll agree with nintendo on this one. just don't play games before the release date... even stream them.... no way i'm supporting any one here.

 

[NinStar]

Subscribers and followers does not = total number of views.

It kinda does, I highly doubt any of his videos went viral with that follower count, and if that was the case I'm pretty sure that at least one member here would have known about his existence.

It is likely that Nintendo lawyers (or whomever the fuck they hired for this kind of matter) decided to actively watch him after they saw his initial response.

 

[impeeza]

That was pretty stupid to stream it. The ninjas are everywhere, always watching.

Even Here (Hello ninjas, how are you?)

 

[RedColoredStars]

It still correlates

It kinda does, I highly doubt any of his videos went viral with that follower count, and if that was the case I'm pretty sure that at least one member here would have known about his existence.

It is likely that Nintendo lawyers (or whomever the fuck they hired for this kind of matter) decided to actively watch him after they saw his initial response.

I respectfully disagree. A person could have 50 subscribers but have thousands of views that led to thousands of downloads of pirated content.

 

[kijetesantakalu042]

I disagree. A person could have 50 subscribers but have thousands of views.

But someone with 5 wouldn't have 2 million views

 

[RedColoredStars]

But someone with 5 wouldn't have 2 million views

My comment was being slightly edited while you were responding. Anyway, he's not being sued for 2 million copyright violations.