We’ve heard in the past about crackdowns on street sales of modded Nintendo hardware and games, but this story is slightly different. Back in April, Tokyo-based Chinese national Ichimin Sho posted an advertisement on a Japanese e-commerce site selling “ultimate save data” for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
In reality, this ultimate save data was actually just modified data, and Sho was offering to make any changes buyers requested – such as boosted stats and abilities for the price of 3,500 yen (around $32.00 USD). One of the interested parties was actually the Niigata Prefectural Police and the 27-year-old man was arrested earlier this week under violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act in Japan.
Sho admitted to the charges and further revealed how his sale of hacked save data dated back to December 2019. In that time he’s earned around 10 million yen. His specific violation was providing paid services to circumvent technical restrictions placed on the Switch by Nintendo. The data alteration though was done by an unidentified accomplice.
If we hear any updates about this story, we’ll be sure to let you know.
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