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

 

[FAST6191]

The first three of those are piracy related and Atmosphere is strictly anti-piracy (out of the box).

They are free to go that way, however it does rather mean they don't get to act surprised when someone comes along with a superior firmware and uses that instead.

 

[realtimesave]

"how do you enjoy being gateway's bitch?" is also a question I would ask, but to you

you are on the wrong forum, kid.

 

[Deleted User]

The first three of those are piracy related and Atmosphere is strictly anti-piracy (out of the box).

What I don't get is if atmosphere is anti-piracy why do they say stuff like "latest update fixes Mario 3D All Stars". Maybe one could argue they're talking about legit copies but realistically atmosphere is maybe only being used for piracy 5% less than sxos was. There probably are some people that just want emulators and homebrew but there's no doubt in my mind a large majority are pirating on atmosphere. And even if they're anti-piracy out of the box it's still their doing that's lead to piracy on the Switch without them it would be as dead as Xbox One because sxos copied atmosphere so it all pretty much is rooted from atmosphere.

I get it you have to get patches to get pirated games to work with atmosphere, but without atmosphere where would the piracy scene on switch be. It reminds me of the saying the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Maybe it's true that the people behind atmosphere are anti-piracy, but they are without a doubt the biggest reason for piracy on Nintendo Switch regardless of their own personal intentions. The whole thing doesn't really make sense if they were really 100% against piracy they just wouldn't come out with cfw at all in my view, because they're making the piracy happen even if it isn't out of the box.

 

[ciaomao]

https://channel22news.com/garyopa-adminstrator-of-maxconsole-arrested-and-charged-with-piracy/

Real pic, or fake? After reading "Bail has been set at 999 coins." I tend to believe the author has checked the facts.

 

[ertaboy356b]

piracy is literally supposed to be getting video games and digital software for free, if you have to pay for a product in order to pirate at that point you might as well just buy the games from the eshop/digital store front
its either free or it aint piracy

With your logic, people with 256GB worth of DS games on their R4 are no pirates LMAO. Just because you have the means to software mod now, does not mean that piracy is always free. You can't even pirate games on the Gamecube without paying first (mod chip, modded memory card).

 

[linuxares]

https://channel22news.com/garyopa-adminstrator-of-maxconsole-arrested-and-charged-with-piracy/

Real pic, or fake? After reading "Bail has been set at 999 coins." I tend to believe the author has checked the facts.

That's a fake. Old one as well.

 

[Flying Scotsman]

They are free to go that way, however it does rather mean they don't get to act surprised when someone comes along with a superior firmware and uses that instead.

I wouldn't exactly call it a "superior firmware" when it's drawn the never ending attention of Ninty's lawyers. It was a ticking time bomb if anything. Yes it includes features Atmosphere does not, but the cost is Ninty comes knocking and you're in limbo seeing if you'll get any future updates to SX going forward. To SciresM's credit - we can at least guarantee Atmosphere will survive the life of the Switch if they keep to their guns as they have been until now.

While Atmosphere does not include piracy related "features" out the box and if you wanted to go down that route you had to put the leg work in - it still straddles the line between gray area and "expect a C&D soon" territory. In the unlikely event Atmosphere comes with anything piracy related (such as sig patches) - you can guarantee the project would be taken down within minutes so things like XCI loading (which used leaked Switch SDK code if I remember right) will never happen publicly.

Atmosphere is open source however so you can just as easily implement it yourself because it'll never survive out in the open and if anything would mean the death knell to CFW on the Switch as a whole since pretty much every CFW available on the Switch is based on Atmosphere in some form (even SX).

 

[Legendaykai]

Something i wanted to do since seeing this whole switch mod thing begining now the main ones in charge are gettng their own "modchips" installed in their asses this is my response to justice being served.

 

[KirovAir]

What I don't get is if atmosphere is anti-piracy why do they say stuff like "latest update fixes Mario 3D All Stars". Maybe one could argue they're talking about legit copies but realistically atmosphere is maybe only being used for piracy 5% less than sxos was.

It was a fix for the legit copy. Nintendo included a new unknown driver which handles the JIT emulation just for 3D All Stars. As atmosphere reimplements the complete kernel that needs to be addressed. Most people don't look beyond what Atmosphere is trying to achieve here and just see the piracy sigpatches. Atmosphere is basically trying to replace the whole Horizon OS to be completely open source which opens many possibilities. By only using sigpatches you are only using like 1% of Atmospheres' potency.

It's basically a passion project of SciresM. If Atmosphere was for piracy only he could have stopped programming a year or two ago as that is like 1% of the code. The fact that basically ALL system modules and the COMPLETE kernel are being rewritten proves that this is way, way more than just a piracy tool.

 

[wartutor]

What I don't get is if atmosphere is anti-piracy why do they say stuff like "latest update fixes Mario 3D All Stars". Maybe one could argue they're talking about legit copies but realistically atmosphere is maybe only being used for piracy 5% less than sxos was. There probably are some people that just want emulators and homebrew but there's no doubt in my mind a large majority are pirating on atmosphere. And even if they're anti-piracy out of the box it's still their doing that's lead to piracy on the Switch without them it would be as dead as Xbox One because sxos copied atmosphere so it all pretty much is rooted from atmosphere.

I get it you have to get patches to get pirated games to work with atmosphere, but without atmosphere where would the piracy scene on switch be. It reminds me of the saying the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Maybe it's true that the people behind atmosphere are anti-piracy, but they are without a doubt the biggest reason for piracy on Nintendo Switch regardless of their own personal intentions. The whole thing doesn't really make sense if they were really 100% against piracy they just wouldn't come out with cfw at all in my view, because they're making the piracy happen even if it isn't out of the box.

By this logic then its really nintendos fault for making the console. If they never did that then nothing would of been made to hack it and zero piracy would take place. Just cause you can get patches to support it doesnt make it atmo's creators fault.

 

[vvaitforme]

servers gone sx.xecuter.com and team-xecuter.com

 

[dim82gr]

Now every one with sx core and mariko,we are waiting for atmosphere compatibility or sx os "clone" for updates and praying that happen before any nintendo update?

 

[Deleted member 534671]

The site is back up again.

 

[ChronoTrig]

I wonder if they were moving the servers to "hide".

 

[MasterJ360]

I wonder if they were moving the servers to "hide".

probably switched hosts, but the site is up again.

 

[SAXJONZ]

To be honest, I could be wrong, I don't believe they had that much of an effect upon their sales. People are perfectly happy to buy old ass movies at Best Buy and all of the big box retail stores when they can just search them up on netflix or other streaming service, YouTube for that matter. People just like to buy shit. Then there are those who like to hack stuff and like the idea of hacking. These are not the people who would generally buy a game to play. There is that. And there is the fact that Xbox 1 is doing something right: Allowing for subscribing to their service at a much cheaper bang for buck than hacking.
Nintendo and all of these corporations are so fucking greedy that they want top dollar for something that they paid someone to design while offering them pennies on the dollar for their efforts. I say fuck the big corporations. I paid over 16 grand for my CD collection when I was in college. I was a CD junkie music student that had to have every cool sounding CD that came out. Did my favorite artists make all that money? I'm glad that the corporate structure fell apart with Napster, file sharing and the ipod, leading to apple iTunes and streaming. I much prefer to go out and pay money to hear live performances than to own a CD that I can call my own.
These guys obviously have a lot of money. It's never about crime, it's always about money. with these people and they tend to fuck those who take pennies from the rich.
Look at the case of the multi billionaire that avoided taxes for so many years. Sheer avarice. You already have more money than a million people would even think of in their wildest dreams of spending. Astronomical the depth of avarice. Rich is never enough. Heaven forbid people actually get out and work for an honest living. They will pay huge fines and most likely get of with supervision or even a position in their company to deter hackers. At that level anything is possible. If they can prove a greater assest to the company than they are if they go to jail...

 

[mrgone]

So Max is again arrested
if wikipedia were to believe, he was arrested multiple times for things relating to piracy before (credit cards, snes copiers).
but i do remember him when german tv show gigaTV visited a demo scene party, which he also attended.
he was named maximilien.
he used the occasion for a "Kalisto sucks" on public tv.

i wish i had a video of that

 

[Tinkerbell]

All Xecuter sites seem to have gone today. Do you think they are gone for good or only hiding?

 

[Bladexdsl]

their toast for sure forget team x they are finished

 

[Bohne]

The page is still offline.
There is no backup page where you can create a license file?