News Nintendo files lawsuit against streamer for pirating games and playing them pre-release

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Nintendo's crusade against emulators continues, with a serious lawsuit being filed against a Twitch streamer who continually played and livestreamed footage of leaked copies of Nintendo Switch games. A copy of the legal proceedings, acquired by news site TorrentFreak, details five different charges pressed to one Jesse Keighin, who uses the handle EveryGameGuru. Keighin had multiple channels and outlets where they were posting videos and streams of gameplay from at least ten Switch titles, all of which had been leaked and made available online prior to their release dates.

These charges are serious, and go beyond just streaming the games, as well.

Defendant is a recidivist pirate who has obtained and streamed Nintendo's leaked games on multiple occasions. Leaked games (sometimes referred to as 'prerelease games') are copyrighted video games which Nintendo has not yet publicly released.

Since these games were not officially released at the time of the footage being taken, Nintendo alleges that these copies that Keighin was playing were pirated, and thus obtained illegally. Instructions on how to find the NSP/XCI files of leaked games were included in the streams, which would also mean the facilitation of piracy. On top of that, both Yuzu and Ryujinx have ended development, rendering the emulators "illegal software", and thus another crime. Continuing on, promoting illegal circumvention tools is a violation. Finally, distributing the prod.keys file allowing for running these pre-release leaks is the final charge, totaling the offenses at five.

For the first two charges, Nintendo is seeking $150,000 in damages for each instance of copyright infringement, and the third through fifth charges are fined at $2,500 per violation, per crime. In total, Nintendo is seeking a $2.4 million dollar settlement altogether.

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