FBI confirms it has seized several Nintendo Switch piracy sites

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed that it has seized “multiple” popular piracy sites distributing pirated Nintendo Switch ROMs.

The details:

• Last week, the FBI announced that it had seized Switch piracy site Nsw2u but has now revealed that several more websites have also been shut down as part of a larger operation tackling video game piracy. In a post to its website, the FBI stated that it had “dismantled the infrastructure” of “several online criminal marketplaces providing pirated versions of popular video games,” including nsw2u, nswdl, game-2u, bigngame, ps4pkg, and mgnetu.

• The law enforcement agency shared that the sites had been providing illegal copies days or weeks prior to their official release for free for “more than four years.” It claimed that due to this, the websites resulted "in an estimated loss of $170m" with over 3.2 million game downloads in just three months.

• While the FBI has used its legal powers to take down the piracy sites, Nintendo itself has been battling pirates over the past few years with a number of lawsuits. Earlier this year, it won a legal battle against Dstorage for hosting pirated games on its platform and failing to remove the reported content. Nintendo also targeted several individual Switch pirates, including the moderators of a piracy subreddit, a streamer who played games prior to release, and a Japanese console modder who provided pirated titles for a small added fee.

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