Canadian hacker Gary Bowser has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a Nintendo lawsuit against him over piracy charges. Bowser is a member of the Team Xecuter group that have created mod chips or jailbroken the Nintendo Switch, 3DS, NES Classic Edition, and other consoles.
Team Xecuter’s most well-known product is a USB device called the SX Pro that allows the Nintendo Switch to run pirated games. Nintendo has been chasing Switch hackers for years, and Bowser was arrested and indicted last year in a separate federal case. He was ordered to pay $4.5 million for charges related to Nintendo Switch hacks. In total, Bowser is paying Nintendo at least $14.5 million in restitution.
Bowser made a business out of selling console mods, a controversial decision in a modding and emulation community that typically focuses on open-source efforts that usually avoid federal authorities. Nintendo has a history of aggressively pursuing unauthorized use of its intellectual property, and the company has regularly gone after ROM sites that host game files.
