You may recall that back in July, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against James “Archbox” Williams for piracy of the Nintendo Switch. He is accused of being “the operator, supervisor and promoter of several Pirate Shops, through which the defendant offered vast libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games.” He was also accused of promoting his pirate shops online and giving technical advice on how people could mod their Switch consoles and play pirated games.
Well, some new court filings from Nintendo have revealed how they were able to track him down. They hired the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp to investigate pirated online video game stores. In doing so, the company found Archbox and used his online posts to track him down near Phoenix, Arizona. They found the same user on Reddit, and by the end of February 2024, “plaintiff [Nintendo] managed to link ‘Archbox’ to at least two Nintendo accounts for a person named James Williams”.
They would eventually find a pair of email accounts associated with James Williams in Arizona. They were actually able to find his name in Nintendo’s repair tracking system, where a pair of repair orders were found under the same name with a shipping address of Surprise, Arizona. It turns out that Williams requested repairs from Nintendo. In March, Nintendo sent him a cease-and-desist letter that he signed via FedEx, Williams denied any wrongdoing, but nonetheless said in an email to Nintendo’s lawyers that he would “comply and cooperate with any requests or demands… within [his] control”. He also closed 3 of his 4 pirate shops.
So why are all these details coming to light now? According to Nintendo, there’s a reason for that. Williams has since cut off communication and missed a required deadline to take his case to court. Because of this, a judgment has now been made in favor of Nintendo. However, the court asked Nintendo to show that they made every effort to contact Williams. This is why these new details about the case have emerged.
