Large Nintendo Piracy Site Seized By The FBI

Nintendo's crackdown on piracy and video game emulation continues, and has seemingly ramped up efforts since 2019. One of the internet's well-known emulation sites was the target of a broad FBI investigation. This reporting comes by way of Kotaku, as popular ROM hosting site Nsw2u, which hosts ROMs for Nintendo games that can be accessed on a hacked Nintendo Switch, was seized by the Bureau on Thursday. Visiting the site, users will be prompted with a message, notifying of the seizure and shutting down.

This domain has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in “accordance with a seizure warrant issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 2323 issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia as part of a law enforcement operation and action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Prior to the launch of the Switch 2, emulation policies have been updated in the Nintendo Switch 2 End User License Agreement to note that they reserve the right to brick your console if you "copy, modify, reverse engineer, lease, rent, decompile, disassemble, distribute, offer for sale, or create derivative works of any portion of the Software, or bypass, modify, defeat, tamper with, or circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Console, unless otherwise permitted by law".

We are in a heightened age of gamers vying for stronger efforts of video game preservation, while rights holders, publishers, and developers are comfortable with stripping ownership of software. Nintendo has previously sued emulation distributors like Yuzu, in which they claimed the outlet was soliciting piracy techniques. In 2021, the publisher sued ROMUniverse, with the court ruling citing they pay Nintendo 2.1 million dollars in damages, effectively shutting down the site. fans will remain strong advocates for piracy, but the principle will not make companies like Nintendo relent in their aggression.

SOURCES: IGN, Kotaku, Nintendo