Nintendo sure gets mixed up with a lot of Bowsers all the time. Aside of being the iconic villain in the Mario franchise, the legendary Reggie Fils-Aimé was replaced by Doug Bowser as president of Nintendo of America - and now, Gary Bowser is being sued for producing and selling hacks for the Nintendo Switch console.
Team Xecuter is a hacking group allegedly led by Bowser, described by Nintendo in the lawsuit as a "an international pirate ring". They specialized in developing, manufacturing and selling "modchips" for the Switch, which are small custom PCBs designed to be installed inside the console to circumvent the hardware's security measures, allowing the use of pirated games.
The modchip business is a pretty big deal, with pirating games on consoles being much harder than on PC. Gary Bowser and fellow Team Xecuter member Max Louarn were arrested last year and charged with 11 felony counts, and now Nintendo is seeking to sue them on trafficking and copyright infringement charges.
A company known to be extremely protective of its IP and routinely shooting down fan projects, it makes sense that Nintendo is also particularly harsh on pirating practices. Bowser, living up to the villainous nature of his namesake, has been involved with pirating activities related to Nintendo devices for a while now, at least since 2013 when he worked on and sold a 3Ds modchip.
The current lineup of Team Xecuter modchips, including the SX Pro, SX Core, and SX Lite all designed for the Nintendo Switch have already incurred previous lawsuits from Nintendo, and the company has attached detailed documentation of how exactly these modchips work and a timeline of Bowser's development efforts.
