The US government wants to put Bowser in prison for five years for his crimes against Nintendo. Gary Bowser, that is, the hacker who has already pled guilty to his role in helping produce and sell devices that allows people to pirate Nintendo Switch games.The sentence was a bit shocking to hear, since Bowser has already accepted a whopping $4.5 million fine for his wrongdoings as part of hacker group Team Xecuter, and an additional$10 million fine from a civil suit from Nintendo. Bowser’s lawyers have pled that the sentence should include no longer than 19 months behind bars considering how he’s complied with the proceedings so far and how involved he actually was in the hacking scheme.RELATED:Nintendo Says Switch is Still in Middle of Its LifecycleIn court documents they argue that Gary Bowser was the only person from Team Xecuter apprehended and so that he is being given the “brunt” of the blame, an unfair amount of payback for his crimes. He earned about $320,000 over seven years by manufacturing and selling these devices, but the lawyers say that other members of his team made far more money and lived rich lives in other countries. This wasn’t some small-time operation; Team Xecuter allegedly made tens of millions of dollars bymass-producing mod chips for the Nintendo Switch, which is why Nintendo went after the group in the first place.
Whether Bowser is being used as an example or not, it’s obvious that the US government is taking the crime very seriously. They state that the sentence of 60 months shows “the nature and circumstances of the offense, the history and characteristics of the defendant, and the need for the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, and to provide just punishment… to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct.” Mod devices continue to be sold online on the darker corners of the web, but this could be a warning against them all, and against thepiracy that can hurt the entire video game industry.
We already know Nintendo takes its brands very seriously, just judging from thenumber of times it’s taken down fan projects, but of course this is a completely different scale of crime. Bowser’s lawyers admit that Nintendo suffered “substantial monetary loss” from his crimes, but they don’t think five years is a fair sentence. A judge will soon decide how much time Bowser will finally face for his crimes.
