Nintendo is suing a publisher for allegedly leaking too many games before release

Key foods

• Nintendo is suing a Colorado resident for allegedly distributing illegal copies of Switch games.
• The company claims that the content creator has streamed footage from unreleased Switch games more than 50 times since 2022, even going so far as to taunt Nintendo after removing some of Nintendo's channels.
• Nintendo is seeking more than $7.5 million in damages.

nintendo is suing a small content creator for allegedly spending months prior to their street date streaming illegal Switch games. Apart from sharing unauthorized videos from the likes Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdomthe streamer even mocked the Japanese gaming giant's legal team.

The Switch was jailbroken for the first time in 2018, shortly after its one-year release anniversary, thanks to a physical vulnerability that has since been patched. This accelerated the development of console emulators and, according to some legal arguments Nintendo has made in the past, made it easier for pirates to release Switch games even before they were officially released.

Some of those claims have now been reiterated in a new lawsuit filed by Nintendo against Jesse Keagin, a Colorado resident who runs a number of social media channels called Every Game Guru. The complaint, filed Nov. 6 in Colorado federal court and first seen by 404 Media, alleges that Keighin repeatedly infringed Nintendo's copyrights by live streaming unreleased Switch games. Nintendo claims it continued to do so even after the company's lawyers sent dozens of copyright takedown notices, and that it has leaked a total of ten Switch games in more than 50 cases since 2022.

The streamer mocked Nintendo's legal team after its content was removed

After a while of this cat and mouse game, Keegin even decided to taunt the Switch developer. “Defendant also emailed Nintendo and stated that he had 'a thousand channel writers' and could 'do it all day,'” the complaint states. In one of his last shows, Kigin was streaming Super Mario Party Jamboree via Kick at least six days before the game's official release on October 17, Nintendo claims. The company says it also found evidence of him circulating a leaked version The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom via YouTube on September 21st, five days before the title officially hits digital and physical store shelves.

Defendant also emailed Nintendo stating that he had “a thousand channel writers” and could “do this all day.”

Apparently, every gaming guru profits from their illegal streams

Nintendo claims that Keygin was mostly leaking pirated versions of its games that were streamed through the emulator. In addition, he is accused of sharing links to Switch emulators like Yuzu and Ryujinx as part of his streams, which Nintendo sees as actively promoting piracy. The gaming giant said that after deleting Keighin's YouTube channel with roughly 1,730 subscribers, the content creator began including a CashApp category in his streams, indicating he remains determined to profit from the live streaming of illegal Switch games.

Nintendo is now seeking millions in damages

Nintendo is seeking $150,000 for each count of copyright infringement Keygin is found guilty of. Since the plaintiff alleges that the defendant streamed the unreleased Switch games more than 50 times, this suggests that the total damages it is seeking are more than $7.5 million.

Source: Nintendo [PDF]