It’s no secret that Nintendo isn’t a fan of piracy. However, this year is becoming quite infamous as it is full of Nintendo taking legal action against various people and companies. Nintendo has been particularly strict about the piracy of Switch games and the vast majority of their legal actions have been related to this.
This is no exception. Nintendo has sued Jesse Keighin, known online as EveryGameGuru. Nintendo claims that Keighin streamed Nintendo Switch games that were emulated. In some cases, the games listed have not yet been officially released, including Mario & Luigi: Brotherhood. Nintendo is seeking $150,000 for each copyright infringement.
Nintendo also accuses Keighin of encouraging Switch piracy by directing its viewers to Switch emulators and tools. It was even quoted on October 17 as Nintendo saying it would “actively help people find newer and updated copies of Ryujinx and Yuzu” and stating that it was helping people play Switch games “on their PCs without having to purchase [Nintendo’s] hardware”.
What makes this streamer different is that, according to Nintendo, he not only continued to stream after his channels were taken down, but sent a letter directly to Nintendo mocking them, claiming that he has “a thousand recording accounts” and can “work this all day”. He is also accused of making money from his streaming. He had a monetized YouTube channel that was taken down. After that, Nintendo accused Keighin of adding the CashApp handle to his streams so viewers could send donations.
Nintendo claims that Keighin has personally admitted to uploading pirated footage of Nintendo Switch gameplay “on at least 50 occasions over the last 2 years”. This means that if Nintendo wins and receives the $150,000 in copyright infringement it is seeking, Keighin could pay as much as $7,500,000.
