The streamer played and streamed at least ten leaked Nintendo games early, bragged about it, and emailed Nintendo directly about carrying on.
Nintendo's litigation team continue to earn their keep — as the company has now filed civil action against a streamer, accusing him of playing several pirated and emulated Nintendo Switch games to his audience.
- A streamer played several Nintendo Switch games before release;
- They openly bragged about having multiple accounts to stream from;
- They emailed Nintendo directly about plans to continue doing so;
- They emailed Nintendo about helping folks find new versions of emulators, such as Yuzu and Ryujinx;
- Nintendo is seeking damages that could rack up to millions;
- Nintendo has a lot of evidence.
The streamer in question is Jesse Keighin, known online as EveryGameGuru. This lawsuit from Nintendo of America, filed November 6, alleges that he played then-unreleased titles, including Mario & Luigi: Brothership (some sixteen days prior to release), across various platforms such as TikTok, Twitch, Kick, and YouTube.
This lawsuit notes that, starting in 2022 Keighin streamed "unauthorised gameplay of at least ten of Nintendo's leaked games before their publication". Nintendo go on to explain in the filing how they would then issue takedown notices to stop these streams, but defendant Keighin would just make another 'burner channel' account in order to continue.
In a wild bit of foolish bluster, Keighin apparently sent Nintendo a letter in response to their copyright takedown notices, boasting about the fact that he has "a thousand burner channels" to stream from, adding that he "can do this all day".
In addition to the allegations of playing pre-release games to an audience, the action from Nintendo also suggests that the numerous streams from Keighin openly promoted and encouraged downloading ROMs of pirated Nintendo games — along with various software and tools (such as emulators Yuzu and Ryujinx) that enable the use of such illegally downloaded titles.
The recent death of projects such as Yuzu and Ryujinx did not seem to deter Keighin either, with the streamer actually emailing Nintendo directly to state that he will be actively helping "people find newer and updated copies of Ryujinx and Yuzu". Talk about brazen.
According to reporting from 404 Media, Nintendo is now seeking damages of up to $150,000 USD per infringement — which could result in a total bill of some $7.5 million.
Emanuel Maiberg
Nintendo's lengthy 47 page case filing (which you can see here) has all the receipts, including screenshots of Keighin's streams of pre-release games on various streaming platforms, along with screenshots from his Discord. Big yikes.
Kevin Wammer