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

 

[Chelsea_Fantasy]

Also don't get all the hate. TX were the first to bring mods and piracy to the Switch, and the only ones to release a working modchip. People should be thankful.

Dude, I personally will never be thankful for what he (they) did.
First: they stole code from homebrew developers
Second: they intentionally bricked their consumer consoles (not only on Switch, but also on 3DS)
And so on...
So, he deserves to be in jail!

 

[deisuke1234]

I think so far over the arguments people from the both sides are correct. However I think the root of the problems is Nintendo themselves has caused this issues through greed. I mean look at the tragedy so called Nintendo 64 emulation

 

[smf]

- SX used stolen code, from Atmosphere AND Nintendo. This is indeed copyright infringement of both SciresM and Nintendo.

Doesn't Atmosphere contain code indirectly stolen from Nintendo?

 

[CTR640]

What a moron! He chose to end up in prison instead of buying some GTX3060Ti's!

 

[wiiando]

Scum? He sold mod chips and a custom firmware that we all use. This entire site is built around hacking, piracy, mod chips etc for decades.

Piracy isn't supported here, the sole purpose of SXOS and their devices SP was piracy, there is a difference, I agree though scum is a strong word, they were taking advantage of a situation, I'd imagine a lot would have done the same.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Piracy isn't supported here, the sole purpose of SXOS and their devices SP was piracy, there is a difference, I agree though scum is a strong word, they were taking advantage of a situation, I'd imagine a lot would have done the same.

It isn't supported here? Ok bro.

Also you could literally download and use SXOS free with just homebrew enabled and the .xci/nsp loading disabled.

 

[linuxares]

I think so far over the arguments people from the both sides are correct. However I think the root of the problems is Nintendo themselves has caused this issues through greed. I mean look at the tragedy so called Nintendo 64 emulation

Then DON'T buy their products. It have nothing to do with greed if people pay or it

 

[RednaxelaNnamtra]

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.

I mean there is a reason Atmosphere doens't allow piracy by itself, and why they actively distance themself from piracy. TX/Gateway on the other hand didn't really try anything of that kind.

Doesn't Atmosphere contain code indirectly stolen from Nintendo?

There is a difference between copy and pasting something with minimal changes, and reverse engineering and reimplementing something.
Im also pretty sure if you would compare atmospheres and nintendos source code, you would find many big differences, and even the resulting binaries are different in many ways.

 

[subcon959]

I liked Gary, he was always fun to chat with.

I like modchips too, I wish the new TX had stuck with hardware like the good old days. I doubt there would be much controversy if they hadn't bothered with SX OS.

 

[pucky]

make a "Pucky OS" and make chips

dont you mean 'potato chips' ?

 

[TheZander]

That's it I'm officially giving up hope that they're releasing an Xbox one solution. They made all the money they needed to buy the dodo birds or whatever. Now they're jailed? I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't half planned after the realization of their xbox failure. The switch was practically already hacked before their glitching tease even came out. If they had just hacked xbox like they should have none of this world have happened they only have themselves to blame.

 

[8BitWonder]

Im also pretty sure if you would compare atmospheres and nintendos source code, you would find many big differences, and even the resulting binaries are different in many ways.

One of the fun ones being the memory savings when using atmosphere
https://github.com/Atmosphere-NX/Atmosphere/wiki/Memory-Comparisons

 

[Viri]

This makes me fear for the next Nintendo console's hacking scene!

 

[DinohScene]

Fecker got let off easy.
Boo!!!

 

[Kioku]

This makes me fear for the next Nintendo console's hacking scene!

Why? Because TX got hit with their just desserts?

Some of you are really reading way too much into this.

 

[Lazyboss]

There are so many criminals in this world roaming free, and then they will catch a guy for modding a console.

This world is turning into shit.

 

[the_randomizer]

Still have no sympathy for Nintendo's "losses"

 

[flowlapache]

This makes me fear for the next Nintendo console's hacking scene!

Don't worry! TX team never helped the scene, they weren't here to share their "work"...And often lazy waiting sciresM news..

 

[the_randomizer]

Don't worry! TX team never helped the scene, they weren't here to share they "work"...And often lazy waiting sciresM news..

And nothing of value was lost

 

[Kioku]

Still have no sympathy for Nintendo's "losses"

The number they threw up is just hilarious.