Team Xecutor is an international group that creates and sells modifications to popular Nintendo games. And the Japanese company is not happy about that.
Over the last year, Nintendo has been hunting down the team’s members. They recently obtained the help of the United States government. And that mission was recently successful as Team Xecutor member Gary Bowser pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. He will now be paying a massive fine.
Nintendo and Bowser have come to an agreement where the hacker will be paying the company $10 million. The gamer is also prohibited from directly or indirectly infringing on Nintendo’s copyrights. In addition, all domains and or online registries associated with Team Xectuter have been turned over to the gaming giant.
The settlement read in part, “This permanent injunction is binding against Defendant worldwide, without regard to the territorial scope of the specific intellectual property rights asserted in the Complaint of the above-captioned case, and may be enforced in any court of competent jurisdiction wherever Defendant or his assets may be found.”
Team Xecutor had long maintained that they were just offering gamers the modifications they were after. The Justice Department, however, said of the group in early November, “Team Xecuter at times cloaked its illegal activity with a purported desire to support gaming enthusiasts who wanted to design their own videogames for noncommercial use. However, the overwhelming demand and use for the enterprise’s devices was to play pirated videogames.”
