Team Xecuter is a hacking group allegedly led by Bowser, described by Nintendo in the lawsuit as a “an international pirate ring”. They specialized in developing, manufacturing and selling “modchips” for the Switch, which are small custom PCBs designed to be installed inside the console to circumvent the hardware’s security measures, allowing the use of pirated games. The modchip business is a pretty big deal, with pirating games on consoles being much harder than on PC. Gary Bowser and fellow Team Xecuter member Max Louarn were arrested last year and charged with 11 felony counts, and now Nintendo is seeking to sue them on trafficking and copyright infringement charges. A company known to be extremely protective of its IP and routinely shooting down fan projects, it makes sense that Nintendo is also particularly harsh on pirating practices. Bowser, living up to the villainous nature of his namesake, has been involved with pirating activities related to Nintendo devices for a while now, at least since 2013 when he worked on and sold a 3Ds modchip. The current lineup of Team Xecuter modchips, including the SX Pro, SX Core, and SX Lite all designed for the Nintendo Switch have already incurred previous lawsuits from Nintendo, and the company has attached detailed documentation of how exactly these modchips work and a timeline of Bowser’s development efforts. The full text of the lawsuit is available to view online, which describes the modchip market and piracy in general as a “serious, worsening international problem" while stating that Team Xecuter’s on-going business would “continue to put more than 79 million Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite consoles at risk from piracy" if not shut down. Video game piracy has become the center of the discussions surrounding video game preservation in recent years as things like DRM, always-online requirements in single player games and digital distribution being tied to storefront servers have put conservation efforts of newer titles in jeopardy, with piracy being the only reliable way to properly ‘save’ some modern games for posterity. Even so, Team Xecuter has generally never been considered one of the ‘good guys’ due to their aggressively for-profit business model and shady practices, as well as the fact that their modchips for the Nintendo Switch don’t do much for game preservation as an endeavor. While Nintendo isn’t seeking the two arrested developers’ Xecution, the company is looking to get $2,500 for each modchip sold, $150,000 for each copyright violation and the permanent closure of the business.
