Nintendo’s $7.5 Million Lawsuit on Streamer Who Leaked Switch Games Way Before Their Release, Explained
Nintendo has taken a legal step against a streamer accused of using illegal means to stream emulated Switch games for years already.
- Nintendo has filed a law suit against a streamer on November 6.
- The reason it stated was pretty concerning for the company and also for the others.
- Generally, fans disagree with these legal actions, but here they are completely supporting Nintendo.
Piracy and leaks are two of the most annoying issues that almost all game developers face. While sometimes the developer teams are bothered about the leaks, most other times they simply ignore them because, no matter what precautions they take, it is hard to restrict these cheaters. Currently, Nintendo has been experiencing this scenario pretty frequently and has chosen a legal way to deal with it.
While often Nintendo faces issues related to piracy and hacking, the Mario Maker team, whenever they get a chance, takes things to a legal suit. The scenario is familiar: Nintendo has sued someone. Recently, once again, it has filed a lawsuit against Jesse Keighin for streaming emulated games and leaking upcoming games way before their release.
Who’s Jesse Keighin and What Is He Accused Of?
If you are an avid gamer and watch streams frequently, you must have a good idea of who Jesse Keighin is. He’s one of the reputed game streamers on Discord, YouTube, Twitch, Kick, and several other live-streaming platforms. If you are still a bit confused about his identity, you must know him as EveryGameGuru.
Now, if you have located him, you will probably remember that Keighin likes to stream Nintendo Switch games, but that’s not the problem. The issue is he generally streams games months before they officially launch.
This year, he not only showed unauthorized footage of Mario and Luigi: Brothership and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom before these games were launched but also teased the legal team of Nintendo.
Reportedly, he even encouraged gamers about the Nintendo emulators. Notably, within one year of Switch’s release, this handheld console by The Legend Zelda makers started receiving emulating tools, and with each passing year, the numbers only increased.
Nintendo Took Things to Court to Fight Piracy and Leaks
This is true: piracy and leaks shouldn’t be encouraged. Therefore, all the companies take security measures to prevent these things as much as possible. Still, it’s hard to fight these things, as a few months ago Game Freak’s GitLab was hacked and the hackers leaked age-old codes and footage of Pokemon games.
Nintendo has always been extra careful about these things, as it used to use controversial anti-piracy support software Denuvo, which is generally accused of causing game lags. Previously, it has sued a Switch emulator named Yuzu for violation of rules and piracy.
Once again, it did the same to the Twitch streamer. First, it tracked down all the channels of the streamer and then filed a complaint in a Colorado federal court on November 6.
According to 404 Media, this lawsuit said that after the company took some action and the streaming platforms took his videos down, the streamer “sent Nintendo a letter boasting that he has ‘a thousand burner channels’ to stream from and [he] ‘can do this all day.”
That’s reportedly one of the reasons behind this lawsuit. There’s more that it has mentioned as the cause of main concern.
Primary Concerns Mentioned in the Complaint for Nintendo Taking This Step
Of course, taunting the company or streaming emulated games aren’t the main reasons. At least that’s what the Japanese multinational company mentioned. According to it, the primary concern was the streamer used to stream these emulated games months before they officially came.
As per the company in the last two years, he had streamed more than ten games that were all pirated copies of different Nintendo Switch games. The issue is those were all copies “without authorization—all before those titles were released to the public.”
Additionally, he is accused of encouraging gamers to get updated versions of two of the notoriously popular Switch enumerators, Ryujinx and Yuzu. This has hampered Nintendo’s mission of removing Switch enumerators.
Fans Are Mostly Siding With Nintendo for Suing the Streamer
The Super Mario developer company is popular for taking legal steps against people, sites, and anyone who breaks its policy. Mostly, fans don’t support these frequent legal steps, but at this point, it seems like the majority is with the company.
As soon as the decision went viral and the accusations came to light, fans jumped to share their opinions, and one commented that he generally hates these random lawsuits, but this time he is agreeing with the Japanese company.
Some have claimed this is a justified step considering that the Japanese multinational company is the owner of these games and it has every right to save them from piracy.
Players are almost entirely convinced that this is a step taken by the company to save the games and the consoles from the hands of hackers and emulators.
This is not going to stop piracy or gamers using emulators to play unauthorized games. This is almost impossible to stop completely.
However, still, it will probably create awareness among those cheaters who do these types of things and aren’t at all ashamed of streaming games that aren’t yet released illegally.
