Gary Bowser has confessed to breaking the protections of the Switch -apkrig
Since 2013, the hacking group operating under the name Team-Xecuter has been selling software and hardware solutions that have made it possible to play illegally obtained copies of games on consoles from Nintendo. Although members of the group have always claimed that they only support the homebrew scene and the right of customers to dispose of their own property, Nintendo perceived the whole situation differently. For several years, in cooperation with police authorities, the group was searched for, and the imaginary trap fell during the last year, when the United States also launched an investigation. Two members were caught – Max Maxarn from France and Gary Bowser from Canada – who had been held in custody for the past year and were awaiting trial. They now face charges of eleven crimes, and if found guilty, they would face up to 20 years in prison. For this reason, too, Gary Bowser decided to admit to two charges, ie trading in equipment designed to break the protections of specific hardware, respectively. conspiracy to circumvent technological measures – and offered Nintendo to pay $ 4.5 million in damages.
Nintendo of America and its president Doug Bowser have filed a lawsuit against alleged Team Xecuter leader Gary Bowser for infringing on Nintendo’s copyright by creating and selling Nintendo Switch hacking devices. We’re not kidding. https://t.co/HQlUfuCJ58 pic.twitter.com/lbnTSWQqHn
— IGN (@IGN) April 18, 2021
Bowser also promised to help police locate the remaining members of the hacker group and intends to cooperate on other matters if necessary, which could help him in court. The prosecution agreed to release Bowser from all other charges, but the judge warned that the hacker was still in danger of imprisonment. Imprisonment would be up to five years for each charge, so Gary Bowser would still have to reckon with his illegal activities. In addition, the plea agreement explains that Bowser was involved not only in Team-Xecuter activities, but also in Axiogame.com and Maxconsole.com, from June 2013 until his arrest last September. It is therefore a question of how the judge will view the whole case and how lenient he will be in determining the amount of the sentence.
In addition, Bowser himself was the group’s leading figure, providing marketing and customer support in addition to the Maxconsole website and managing a library of 13,630 illegal copies of games.
The fact remains that the group – whatever its name – sold in large illegal facilities, which circumvented Nintendo’s standard console protections and allowed illegal copies of games to run. This concerned the Switch, 3DS, SNES Mini and PlayStation Mini consoles, with the best-selling devices being the SX Pro and SX OS modchips, enabling games to be played on the latest Japanese manufacturer’s console. In addition, Bowser himself was the group’s leading figure, providing marketing and customer support in addition to the Maxconsole website and managing a library of 13,630 illegal copies of games. On the other hand, we can read from the documentary of Gary Bowser’s guilt that Nintendo already in 2018 applied updated technical measures that prevent the console from being hacked with the mentioned chips, which has so far only been speculated about. Regardless, Team-Xecutor was to come up with at least tens of millions of dollars, of which approximately $ 320,000 flowed into Gary Bowser’s pocket each year.
“Imagine someone stealing something you invented and then selling it to customers around the world. That’s exactly what Team-Xecutor did, “says Raymond Duda of the FBI, who, of course, dealt with the hacker lawsuit. “This is a perfect case for why the FBI has made the prevention of intellectual property theft a priority. These arrests should send a signal to potential pirates that the FBI does not consider these crimes to be a game, “adds Duda. In the case of Nintendo, similar efforts to punish exemplary punishment are nothing out of the ordinary – the company has in the past sharply opposed the operators of sites with illegal copies of games and imposed fines of millions on them through the courts. One of the best known is the case of a married couple who operated the LoveROMS and LoveRETRO portals, for which a fine of $ 12 million was subsequently imposed on them.
