The law hits back hard at Team Xecuter: 3 team members indicted with two, including GaryOPA, arrested & Nintendo wins $2 million in lawsuit against UberChips!
It is no secret that Nintendo wants to crack down on Team Xecuter’s operations and with the release of SX Core & SX Lite, these efforts have heightened as all Switch units can be hacked thus allowing for piracy. In this article, we’ll be looking at 3 members of Team Xecuter being officially charged (indicted) & Uberchips having to fork out $2 million to Nintendo after a lawsuit!
US authorities indict 3 Team Xecuter members with 2 arrested
The law is closing in on Team Xecuter with 3 of its members indicted and 2 arrested due to developing devices that allow for video-game piracy in current generation consoles.
On Friday, the US Justice Department shared via a press release that 3 members of Team Xecuter have been officially charged with 11 felony counts which range from conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and trafficking in circumvention devices among others. As per the press release, the members of Team Xecuter that have been indicted include:
- Gary Browser, better known as GaryOPA – Arrested
- According to legal documents, he was responsible for developing Team Xecuter’s circumvention devices & marketing them. He initially started the ‘rumours‘ back in October of last year about Team Xecuter hacking mariko Switches & Switch Lite consoles with various updates on MaxConsole
- Max Louarn who is also known as MaXiMiLiEn – Arrested
- He is considered to be one of Team Xecuter’s leaders and has recruited exploit developers while also handling strategic business decisions
- Yuanning Chen
- Chen provided financing and strategic guidance
Sifting through the indictment provided within the press release, the devices that are specifically being mentioned include Gateway (a 3DS flash cart for hacking), Stargate (yet another 3DS flash cart), SX OS & SX Pro (Switch CFW & hacking tool) together with Classic2Magic (hardware letting you play ROM dumps from a pendrive on the SNES Mini/Classic). You may find out further information about the indictment including legal documents by following the link below the DoJ’s press release.
Nintendo wins $2 million in lawsuit against UberChips
Back in May, UberChips closed its doors after Nintendo filed a lawsuit specifically targeting it and now, that’s apparently been settled for $2 million (settlement below)
Back in May, Nintendo filed two lawsuits against various resellers of Team Xecuter’s offerings including Uberchips in a bid to reduce availability of the mod chip at least in the United States. This lawsuit sought hefty damages from these resellers including $2.5k for every circumvention device they sold which would obviously wipe out a good deal of their profits. Now, Nintendo and UberChips have reached a settlement with the latter paying the former $2 million while also having to hand over its domain name and destroy all remaining stock which is effectively a death sentence.
Seeing how Nintendo got their way when it comes to Team Xecuter’s resellers, obtaining an SX Core & SX Lite in the US will undoubtedly become more difficult as those selling them may be afraid of ending up sued and for good reason. As a result, if you wish to hack your Switch console, it may be a better idea to track down an older unit vulnerable to the fusee-gelee vulnerability which is not patchable by software!
Conclusion
With all of Nintendo’s legal action against Team Xecuter, it seems that SX Core & SX Lite will have a harder time getting in the hands of consumers thus impacting their success. However, in the future, we might just see similar mod chips by vendors other than Team Xecuter that could perhaps allow one to run Atmosphere which is a CFW that’s free, open source and does not allow for piracy out of the box thus increasing the chance of such products staying on the market!
US’ Department of Justice press release on some of Team Xecuter’s members being indicted and arrested: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-members-notorious-videogame-piracy-group-team-xecuter-custody
UberChips’ settlement with Nintendo (acquired by TorrentFreak): https://torrentfreak.com/images/nintendo-uberchips-settle.pdf
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