Nintendo Wins $4.5 Million Switch Piracy Lawsuit Against Reddit Moderator Archbox

Reddit moderator James “Archbox” Williams has been ordered to pay Nintendo of America $4.5 million in damages after a Washington court entered a default judgment in the company’s Switch piracy lawsuit against him on 23 September 2026. The judgment also orders Williams to immediately disable every online shop he operates or controls that has offered libraries of pirated Switch games for download.

A default judgment means Williams never responded to the lawsuit in court, so the case ended without a defence. Nintendo received the full amount it requested in October 2025, almost two years and three months after it first sued him.

What Nintendo Accused Archbox Of

Nintendo accused Williams of copying, distributing, and promoting pirated Switch games, and of creating, running, and promoting websites where users could download extensive libraries of them. The company’s filings described him as the “operator, overseer, and driving force behind several Pirate Shops,” the storefronts the court has now ordered him to take offline.

Williams was reportedly a moderator of the r/SwitchPirates subreddit. The forum is still active, but Williams no longer appears on its moderator list. In the Switch piracy community at the centre of the case, one of the top-voted replies to the news blamed Williams for selling pirated games in the first place.

How the Case Reached a $4.5 Million Judgment

Nintendo pitched the $4.5 million figure as restraint. Its October 2025 motion argued the sum was “nowhere near an amount that would compensate NOA” (Nintendo of America) for Williams’ conduct. The company added that it could have sought several million dollars in statutory damages for violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and described its request as reasonable because it didn’t.

Because Williams never contested the case, nobody argued that number down in court, which makes the award effectively the figure Nintendo set for itself. The case unfolded like this:

Nintendo’s Wider Switch Piracy Crackdown

Nintendo puts its lost game sales from piracy at $170 million, and Williams is far from its only target. Before the Switch 2 arrived, many of the original Switch’s biggest releases, including Zelda and Pokemon games, could be downloaded ahead of their release dates. Nintendo answered with a growing run of lawsuits against piracy websites, hardware hackers, pirate software sellers, and even people who livestreamed pirated games, and at one point worked with the FBI.

That pressure has kept building through 2026. In June, Nintendo sued Modded Hardware, which sells kits that modify Switch consoles to play pirated games. Earlier this month, the company went after illegal European storefronts selling Switch games and hardware, and a ruling from the District Court of The Hague in the Netherlands made it illegal to sell modding kits that let players download and play pirated games. In a statement to IGN about that ruling, Nintendo told players to avoid circumvention devices, circumvention software, and unauthorised game copies, warning that they risk interfering with how genuine consoles and games work.

How Nintendo Found Archbox

Nintendo reportedly tracked Williams down through its own repair service. Game File reported in November 2024 that the company identified him via Reddit, then linked that identity to a Nintendo account that had been used to request hardware repairs. According to that report, the account gave Nintendo his address, and the company shipped a repaired piece of hardware there just days before sending the cease-and-desist letter that led to the lawsuit.