Nintendo Hacker Sentenced To Over 3 Years In Prison

gameinformer.com:

Nintendo hacker Gary Bowser has been sentenced to 40 months in prison after he pled guilty to piracy charges. 

Bowser was one of the leaders of Team Xecuter, a sophisticated for-profit video game hacking group that created and sold console-hacking software and hardware, such as mod chips. The group consists of over a dozen individuals located worldwide, and their tech allowed consoles such as the Switch, Nintendo 3DS, the NES Classic, the PlayStation Classic, and Xbox to run pirated games. Unlike others in the emulation/modding community who create free, open-source software, Team Xecuter charged money for its services. Bowser’s role included running websites that, according to the US Department of Justice, marketed these products to customers while helping create and support online libraries of pirated games.

Naturally, their activity drew the ire of Nintendo, who roped in the US government to launch a formal investigation. Bowser and other team Xecuter leaders, Max Louran of France and Yuanning Chen of China, were arrested in September 2020 and initially charged with 11 felony counts each. The men potentially faced over 20 years in prison. 

“These defendants lined their pockets by stealing and selling the intellectual property of other video-game developers–even going so far as to make customers pay a licensing fee to play stolen games,” said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran after the arrests in 2020. “This conduct doesn’t just harm billion-dollar companies, it hijacks the hard work of individuals working to advance in the video-game industry.”

The 52-year old Bowser, originally from Canada, was arrested in the Dominican Republic and deported to the US, where he has remained in custody ever since. He pleaded guilty to two