Gary Bowser from Team Xecuter pleads guilty to charges, agrees to pay Nintendo $4.5 million

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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.

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64bitmodels

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Face it you Nintendo simps are genuinely mentally ill and should go back to ResetEra. Nintendo targets children on purpoose, so that you develop a cult like mentality about being a Nintendo fan.
As "adults" you weirdos don't think, you let big N do the thinking for you. All because you played a bunch of overrated side scrollers in your youth and didn't know what a good videogame is.

It "makes sense" for someone investing his whole life into a brand to seethe when your product can be remplaced and be done better by another.
finally, someone who understands how i feel about 99% of the nintendo fanboys on this site.
 

The Catboy

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I love how you dudes are saying "good riddance" on a site that's literally all about modchips and piracy. As far as i'm concerned this is just holding the switch back from getting a true softmod. are you with nintendo or against them???
Gary really didn't do much for the scene outside of posting announcements for updates, to not repeat a previous post
Gary was just marketing and nothing else to the scene. He spent much of his time making empty promises and reassuring people that updates were going to happen. Gary was actually a lot more problematic for the scene then people might have realized. He was constantly stealing news, funneling clicks through his site to their actual source, attempting to convince devs into making close-source versions of their projects, making claims about community devs, and countless other issues. He was actually kind of a nuisance that people built up because he posted news for closed source products.
That being said, I am pro-community mods and against shady teams selling closed-source products. SXOS would have been more helpful for the community if their work was documented and available to the community. They would have been helpful if they did something like the AK Team and made their software and SDK publically available and simply provided the hardware for exploit purposes. The main reason we are setback is that they kept everything closed off from the public and thus didn't future-proof their product.
 
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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!
no scum have been brought to justice here, the scum are Nintendo and it's lawyers lets be real whether used for homebrew, piracy,a media centre, linux box etc.

your hardware is your hardware and we shouldn't need to modify our hardware with mod chips to get access to what they stole from us. (the right to use our equipment the way we want.)

I never agree'd to licence the software, im not asking for the source code but I certainly want the right to my hardware by any means necessary.
and I certainly didnt "rent" the hardware so if they want to control it I want compensation for that privilege.

while they may have the legal right to lock down hardware as does any other electronics company they certainly have no moral right to do so, remember everything the Nazi's did was legal in there country, slavery was legal when it existed etc. all those cliche's about unjust laws & "justice"

the fact is not all laws are just or moral.

its just further proof the west is truly a corporatocracy we just lie to ourselves that its not, but not enough people stand up because stealing your rights when it comes to your hardware isn't as egregious as other evils we have faced in the past and people would rather shut up and take the abuse than do something about it.
 

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It astounds me how many people think that hacking a system is the moral high ground. I don't think its wrong to do what you want but you're not robin hood. All business practices these days are at least somewhat shady. But you're not sticking to the man. You are just playing with your toys.
 

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This was bound to happen eventually. If you create and sell a device that is mostly designed for piracy, you're basically doomed from the start. It is disappointing that this may be the end of newer-gen Switch hacking. At least from what I understand, their modchip was the only way to hack newer Switch consoles. While I don't condone piracy, not being able to run homebrew is a huge loss.

I have always believed that a computing device is only yours if you can freely run custom software. If you can only run official software and nothing else, it is not truly your device. I would have stopped buying Nintendo consoles long ago for this reason, but I like a lot of the Nintendo-exclusive game franchises.
In fairness, I keep an SX chip on-hand purely to restore systems with a dead or corrupt EMMC. You can say it's mostly designed for piracy, but at the end of the day the device doesn't do that - SX OS, which had a separate license realistically just disabled all security in horizon, which is where the stickiness comes from. But the core and lite themselves don't actually do anything beyond put the console in a state which allows it to accept a custom payload. They are not piracy devices and aren't designed to be. This isn't a PS1/2 modchip that just purely enables reading of backup discs and defeats just that layer of security. A thunderbolt cable isn't a piracy device just because it can be used to jailbreak an iphone and then somebody just happens to pirate an app.

I, and even the courts see no issue with these kinds of devices that give me, as primarily a repair/serviceman an ability to repair something I otherwise would be unable to.
 

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In fairness, I keep an SX chip on-hand purely to restore systems with a dead or corrupt EMMC. You can say it's mostly designed for piracy, but at the end of the day the device doesn't do that - SX OS, which had a separate license realistically just disabled all security in horizon, which is where the stickiness comes from. But the core and lite themselves don't actually do anything beyond put the console in a state which allows it to accept a custom payload. They are not piracy devices and aren't designed to be. This isn't a PS1/2 modchip that just purely enables reading of backup discs and defeats just that layer of security. A thunderbolt cable isn't a piracy device just because it can be used to jailbreak an iphone and then somebody just happens to pirate an app.

I, and even the courts see no issue with these kinds of devices that give me, as primarily a repair/serviceman an ability to repair something I otherwise would be unable to.
The problem isn't in the device itself, but the software, like you've stated. However, when your product advertising primarily focuses on hacking the system to enable piracy? You're setting yourself up for failure.
 
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It astounds me how many people think that hacking a system is the moral high ground. I don't think its wrong to do what you want but you're not robin hood. All business practices these days are at least somewhat shady. But you're not sticking to the man. You are just playing with your toys.
This isn’t about some moral high ground, it’s about shady teams causing their own downfall and not actually helping the community. Losing SX products is a loss for the community, but it’s a loss created by a team who didn’t share documentation of their products nor any of their sources. This can not be said of open source community projects. If something happened to the devs behind those projects, the source code is well documented, backed up, and publicly available for anyone to continue work from. There are flashcart teams in the past that made their kernel and SDK publicly available and as a result we saw community efforts long past the expiration date of those products. SX’s greatest failure comes from them not future-proofing and not directly cooperating with the community, which puts us in the current situation where don’t have the means of continuing their work.
 
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The problem isn't in the device itself, but the software, like you've stated. However, when your advertising primarily focuses on hacking the system to enable piracy? You're setting yourself up for failure.
That would be fair if it were true, but Team Xecuter actively acted against piracy. Anything even remotely discussing piracy would result in a ban and removal of content. Contrary to popular belief, the content of Reddit does not reflect the goals or ideals of Team Xecuter.
 
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That would be fair if it were true, but Team Xecuter actively acted against piracy. Anything even remotely discussing piracy would result in a ban and removal of content. Contrary to popular belief, the content of Reddit does not reflect the goals or ideals of Team Xecuter.
They most definitely did not actively act against piracy. One of their big selling points was XCI loading. Calling them "backups" doesn't change the fact they vaguely bragged about being able to load games outside of Nintendo's permitted guidelines. Nobody said anything about Reddit. Let alone public forum posts.
 

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They most definitely did not actively act against piracy. One of their big selling points was XCI loading. Calling them "backups" doesn't change the fact they vaguely bragged about being able to load games outside of Nintendo's permitted guidelines. Nobody said anything about Reddit. Let alone public forum posts.
Ahh, I see... Yes XCI loading was a primary function of SX OS, as was the ability to dump your own cartridges, which is legally not piracy, for quite a long time I would have access to my switch library without carrying around the carts with me, which I found to be super useful - but that is a point of contention when discussing for some people and I understand that, you are allowed to have your own opinion and that's totally fine. I won't try change your stance on that as we're just on opposite sides of the fence and that's just how things are sometimes 👍
 

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It astounds me how many people think that hacking a system is the moral high ground. I don't think its wrong to do what you want but you're not robin hood. All business practices these days are at least somewhat shady. But you're not sticking to the man. You are just playing with your toys.
why can't it be both the moral high ground and just playing with your toys.?

hacking our systems to do what we want is the moral position because its ours and our right to do what we want with our hardware shouldn't be stolen from us.

to vusuailize it better lets comparison that isn't computers/electronics.
imagine if you bought a car and you could only go to a gas station owned and associated by that dealer, (app stores/ closed platforms)
or your AC or <insert engine part here> stops working by design after you drive a certain distance from a authorized dealer (allways online/ periodic online checks)
not to mention repairs or the ability to buy parts from who or when you want etc.

would I consider having the ability for a car owner to use and/or fixing there car being them being a "Robin Hood" no.
but I would consider it having the moral high ground and thus any corporation trying to steal those rights to be immoral.
even though in many instances using cars is as you put it "just playing with your toys." like it is with computers/electronics.

consoles are principally no different and to say otherwise is to buy into immoral corporatist propaganda.
 

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But they are known to have been putting brick code in their software that bricks your console if you try to run it without their hardware I believe. If I remember correctly... That is just a very shitty move.

Imagine if Nintendo did not block your account but instead bricked your console on purpose if they identified that you were running custom firmware... :D That would be the the same thing pretty much

No need to imagine. Nintendo did brick consoles intentionally. Intentionally bricked region changed Korean Wii's with an update. Looked for the Korean key (unique to Korean Wii) and if found, brick. Didn't have to, could have made the update fail, but chose the brick.

Got a free pass for it, no one cared then and no one cares now. Whether bricking is good or bad, depends entirely on if people like the company.
 
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preety sure he hurted alot of software sales , with the switch having so much install base more than 90 millions consoles even if it was like 1% of hacked switchers that would be a damn huge money that was lost of software sales nintendo and 3rd party alike.
Same old wrong math. While there are people that pirate games just because they can, the most of them couldnt pay for the games or the games arent worth their money. Or they are like me and mostly dump their bought games for convenience. See it does not make sense but its WAY more expensive to only buy digital copies so i buy them physicals from amazon or ebay and dump them so i wont have to switch cards. And yes i still own them but they probably never get out of their shelf ever again.

What i was getting at was that your math includes ALL of the pirated games while most of those woudnt have been bought even if they couldnt pirate them. So its not 1% but more like, 0,01% or something.
 
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Same old wrong math. While there are people that pirate games just because they can, the most of them couldnt pay for the games or the games arent worth their money. Or they are like me and mostly dump their bought games for convenience. See it does not make sense but its WAY more expensive to only buy digital copies so i buy them physicals from amazon or ebay and dump them so i wont have to switch cards. And yes i still own them but they probably never get out of their shelf ever again.

What i was getting at was that your math includes ALL of the pirated games while most of those woudnt have been bought even if they couldnt pirate them. So its not 1% but more like, 0,01% or something.
even if it was 0.01%
Lifetime unit sales for Switch console gaming software amounted to 578 million.

So 5 780 000 heck he is even getting a discount lol 4.5 million is less than 0.01% of sotware sales up to march 2021.
 

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Gary has been a criminal since the 90's! He ran from sony and fled to another country after losing a case they had against for millions!

In another case he was found guilty on credit card theft where he served over 6 yrs in prison. And all these idiots paying with credit cards to all these fake store fronts he and TX had set up... lol and he's done other stuff, just google it.
 
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*Snipped reply to deleted post*

why can't it be both the moral high ground and just playing with your toys.?

hacking our systems to do what we want is the moral position because its ours and our right to do what we want with our hardware shouldn't be stolen from us.

to vusuailize it better lets comparison that isn't computers/electronics.
imagine if you bought a car and you could only go to a gas station owned and associated by that dealer, (app stores/ closed platforms)
or your AC or <insert engine part here> stops working by design after you drive a certain distance from a authorized dealer (allways online/ periodic online checks)
not to mention repairs or the ability to buy parts from who or when you want etc.

would I consider having the ability for a car owner to use and/or fixing there car being them being a "Robin Hood" no.
but I would consider it having the moral high ground and thus any corporation trying to steal those rights to be immoral.
even though in many instances using cars is as you put it "just playing with your toys." like it is with computers/electronics.

consoles are principally no different and to say otherwise is to buy into immoral corporatist propaganda.

Hahaha LOL ROFL Why can't it be both? Because it's not.

Hacking a video game system is not noble.. You are not Robin Hood LOL. I don't mind people doing whatever they want with their systems, of course. Anything you own. I modify everything I have pretty much, however, you're not a hero for doing it. It's definitely not the moral High Ground. There are other devices out there if you want to tinker. That's not what this one's for. To call it the moral High ground it's just some kind of mental acrobatics meant to make yourself feel better. Come on man LOL. You're not Robinhood, man. And you ARE just playing with your toys. That's your only real argument. It's mine and I will play with it how I want. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Moral High Ground? LOL just because you bought a frying pan doesn't mean you're entitled to food to put in it! LOL and if I want to make a product I can make it any way I want even if that means you can't do what you want with it. Especially if you have to sign an agreement in order to use it. If you don't like that buy another similar product that does what you want. There are plenty of other tablets out there.

Wow.
 
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mikefor20

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This isn’t about some moral high ground, it’s about shady teams causing their own downfall and not actually helping the community. Losing SX products is a loss for the community, but it’s a loss created by a team who didn’t share documentation of their products nor any of their sources. This can not be said of open source community projects. If something happened to the devs behind those projects, the source code is well documented, backed up, and publicly available for anyone to continue work from. There are flashcart teams in the past that made their kernel and SDK publicly available and as a result we saw community efforts long past the expiration date of those products. SX’s greatest failure comes from them not future-proofing and not directly cooperating with the community, which puts us in the current situation where don’t have the means of continuing their work.

An awful lot of the posts on here are about how TX deserved it. About how they're not supposed to be selling this code or how they're not giving credit yada yada yada. Essentially taking the moral High Ground.
It really isn't.
And none of the developers owe the community damn thing LOL Even TX.
 
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Except you are the guy who has been arguing in defense of SX OS for over 12 hours spamming this topic. You really need to give it a rest.

Also, when SXOS first came out, it was strictly for piracy (since there wasn't much homebrew available, most users couldn't even create their own backups), so you can't say that SX OS was mainly for homebrew.
There were lots of homebrew available. For around a year (since firmware 3.0.0) all we had access to was homebrew since exploits at the time weren't powerful enough to patch signatures.
 

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