Nintendo takes legal action against Switch piracy Reddit mod Archbox, seeks $4.5M in damages

On Oct. 3, 2025, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against James C. Williams, more commonly known online as Archbox, regarding his participation in the alleged distribution of pirated Nintendo Switch games online, and seeks $4.5 million in compensation.

According to the lawsuit, Archbox allegedly participated in these activities willingly, and it has “substantially damaged NOA’s [Nintendo of America] overall business and intellectual property rights, as well as the business and intellectual property rights of NOA’s development and publishing partners, and further has caused harm to the many artists, game designers, programmers and others whose livelihoods depend upon the sale of authorized Nintendo products.”

Nintendo also alleges that Archbox posted material on a subreddit called the SwitchPirates and eventually became one of the leading moderators of the community. Nintendo claims that he posted “thousands of messages to the SwitchPirates Reddit community,” which also includes “soliciting ‘donations’ of Nintendo eShop Gift Cards for the purchase of games to be copied and distributed on the Pirate Shops.”

The lawsuit states that Nintendo first filed the complaint on June 28, 2024, with no response. Then, on Aug. 13, 2024, Nintendo requested Entry of Default, which means that the company is pushing the court to grant them the win since there was no response from Archbox.

The court remains quiet about its decision and has not indicated when a decision should be expected.

This case is similar to a recent one, also from Nintendo, where the company sued ModdedHardware. Nintendo won this case, and the owner of the website was ordered to pay $2 million and receive a permanent injunction from piracy-enabling activities.