The United States Department of Justice has shared some news regarding Team-Xecuter, which doesn't appear to be a good sign for the company. Gary Bowser, known on GBAtemp as garyopa, Max Louarn, and Yuanning Chen have all been arrested in Seattle, Washington. The US Government classifies these men as "leaders of one of the world's most notorious videogame piracy groups", and will be facing a federal indictment charge, for the selling of illegal hardware that facilitates piracy.

“These defendants lined their pockets by stealing and selling the work of other video-game developers – even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games,” said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran for the Western District of Washington. “This conduct doesn’t just harm billion dollar companies, it hijacks the hard work of individuals working to advance in the video-game industry.”

The FBI has also been involved, with each defendant to be charged under 11 felony counts, ranging from wire fraud, trafficking circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. One of the defendants, Louarn, has not yet been extradited, though Bowser has, where he was seen in the court hearing that took place today.

In September 2020, Louarn and Bowser were arrested abroad in connection with the charges in this case. The United States will seek Louarn’s extradition to stand trial in the United States. Bowser was arrested and deported from the Dominican Republic, and appeared today in federal court, in New Jersey.

Each defendant is charged with 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Source

 

[musmanzafar]

i know this but this is still a hassle, i need to hook up my PC to my switch using USB cable and run the app on both sides and hope it will works.
some times it won't work.

It works for me for all the games except Astral Chain. I have 100% success rate of installing games via Godleaf/Quark. You need to have latest sigpatches

 

[SterneSchreien]

Crap... I liked how SXOS worked compared to atmo & co.

 

[AngryCinnabon]

I'm gonna be honest, i'm both happy and sad about this one. the thing that concerns me is how v2 chips will work now. Xecuter was shitty and we KNOW they're behind many other sketchy hardmods but well, they did do some things good for the scene...gotta hope boot.dat gets figured out so when atmosphere gains markio support i can just do a quick swap.

 

[peteruk]

It's okay to see this as a company hunting for their copyrighted material and all that drama, it's legal, I can understand that. But to be celebrating the fact that some people got canned? That is really low.

I said this in my very first post on this thread mate, never wanna see people go to jail for fcuking this shit. Lock up the molesters, rapists, murderer's etc... first ffs

 

[brickmii82]

There will be penetration testing in the penitentiaries of our penal system indeed.

I'm going to hell for saying that

Why? It’s legal with proper consent.

 

[[Truth]]

Gary opa was the biggest scumbag in every scene he put his nose into. Maxconsole was a great site till he fucked it over.i rember all the billshit he did in the psp scene. He was the reason trojan brickers were put in place of dark alex psp cfw. He is the guy who put drm on comunity found exploits. He is the guy who burns a house from inside down and just moves to a new one aka kills a scene. Many people will cherish knowing he will be cornholed for atleast 10 years. Fuck you gary rip to his anus

Yep, fuck him.
Fuck him for his TrueBlue DRM bullshit in the PS3 scene.
Ha, karma exists in the end.

 

[weatMod]

Atmosphere isn't selling products with a sole intent of circumventing copyright protection like TX.

but they are not , nowhere does it say SXOS is ONLY for the purpose of loading backups
SXOS has a homebrew menu it's not for the SOUL PURPOSE of loading backups

 

[Sizednochi]

If you're celebrating or making fun of this, you are a scum.

So people are scum if they celebrate criminals getting arrested? Lmao what kinda logic is that. It's like you hold piracy into such high standards. I pirate everything and I think this is hilarious. Never used anything from them, thank god.

 

[Bimmel]

It's okay to see this as a company hunting for their copyrighted material and all that drama, it's legal, I can understand that. But to be celebrating the fact that some people got canned? That is really low.

Agreed. What some people are saying here makes me wanna puke.

Justice was served. But to say that someone will get fucked in prison or something is just cruel.

 

[lukands]

If there is still $$$ to be made won`t the China team players still keep it SX going?

 

[weatMod]

Switch Lite owners in shambles

The people who are celebrating this are lame

The scene took a big hit today.

switch ite SX lite owner
but can't we just use SX lite chip to load a free CFW and load a current emunand with patches if we don't see anymore SXOS updates

 

[musmanzafar]

So people are scum if they celebrate criminals getting arrested? Lmao what kinda logic is that. It's like you hold piracy into such high standards. I pirate everything and I think this is hilarious. Never used anything from them, thank god.

Thieves talking about high moral grounds. The irony

 

[shanefromoz]

I feel sorry for the people who just hard modded there switches with sxos mod chip. How will they get updates now

 

[Sizednochi]

I feel sorry for the people who just hard modded there switches with sxos mod chip. How will they get updates now

I think they deserve it. Paying for piracy is the most stupid thing ever.

 

[Flying Scotsman]

RIP SXOS,


hopefully someone will update their bootdat once we go past 10.2.0

Highly likely this isn't going to happen as it's closed source - i.e only TX have access to it. If TX disappear, so does SX.

What did Team Executor do wrong? I'm not going to defend them or anything but they've been doing Nintendo Console Modding for like years I think so what happened that got them arrested?

Selling devices and software to bypass anti-piracy measures.

Now if it were free, Ninty couldn't sting them for wire fraud charges but they could still get them for circumventing anti-piracy measures (which is a lesser charge). The wire fraud charge is meant to be a pretty serious indictment in the courts so they won't get off lightly if convicted.

I do have a question that spawned from this: will there be a free/open-source hardware version of the modchip that can be used for more legitimate purposes? Otherwise, there may not be another way for a while for patched units and Switch Lites.

I remember reading the Atmosphere devs were looking into making an open source mod chip but haven't seen it mentioned in a while.

We never know maybe someone will take over and change the name from SXOS to "Yet another switch CFW"

Highly likely. Happens a lot in P2Cs for games (cheat devs are sued, they either sell the source and it's rebranded or they rebrand just before they suspect a lawsuit is filed so the company filing the lawsuit has to start again).

Next will be those pirate sites.

They've already targeted pirate sites so they moved underground and/or onto torrent sites.

If the music and film industry, with a huge pot of money which dwarfs Nintendo's, has issues taking down torrent sites - you can bet Nintendo won't even try.

 

[musmanzafar]

I think they deserve it. Paying for piracy is the most stupid thing ever.

Well they didn't have any other options, do they?

 

[Viri]

Can someone explain this one to us laymen?

The reason you see a shit ton of bed stores in the US, and why art sells for so much.

 

[donaldgx]

cut one head, two more will pop up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Rikua]

I think they deserve it. Paying for piracy is the most stupid thing ever.

Yet, it has existed since the dawn of modding. This place cracks me up, you do know that this is GBAtemp right? They used to advertise selling GBA and DS modchips lol Let's not forget DRM on games. Back in the day they had PHYSICAL devices you had to plug into your printer port to run said game.

 

[Kubas_inko]

Where's @garyopa ?
He always liked doing TX news/announcements...