Nintendo filed a lawsuit Wednesday against an Amazon Marketplace user who was allegedly selling devices called RCM loaders. Used to help people jailbreak their Switch, shutting these down is the latest in the companyâs efforts to stop players from pirating its games.
As first reported by Polygon, the lawsuit against reseller Le Hoang Minh seeks ârelief for unlawful trafficking in circumvention devices in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).â In addition to having the Seattle District Court order Minh to stop selling the devices, Nintendo also wants $2,500 in damages for each one already sold.
âPiracy of video game software has become a serious, worsening international problem,â Nintendoâs lawyers write (without offering any further detail), arguing that the RCM loaders and other devices like them are are a big contributor to that. While jailbreaking a Switch isnât necessarily itself against the law, pirating games is, and devices whose primary purpose is to facilitating that are also prohibited. The loaders arenât hard to find on Amazon and other resellers, but itâs essentially the code the loaders are running to jailbreak the Switch that people buy them for and which Nintendo wants to stop the spread of.
According to the legal complaint Nintendo filed, the company originally sought to have Minhâs listings removed from Amazon by issuing DMCA-related takedowns, but Minh filed a counter-notification with Amazon to keep the listings up, forcing Nintendo to take the matter to court.
Itâs not the first time either. Nintendo has spent the last year getting more aggressive with Switch hack sellers. Just last month the company won a $2 million settlement against a seller called Uberchips, and two members of the Switch hack makers Team Xecuter were arrested on 11 felony counts
