A Washington federal court has ordered former Reddit moderator James ‘Archbox’ Williams to pay Nintendo $4.5 million in damages following a severe copyright infringement lawsuit. The sweeping default judgment includes a permanent injunction that legally prohibits Williams from distributing pirated video games, deploying circumvention tools, or encouraging others to utilize such software. While the ruling stands as a massive legal victory for the gaming giant, whether Nintendo will ever be able to successfully collect the multi-million-dollar payout remains uncertain, largely because Williams completely stopped answering the allegations as the legal proceedings unfolded in federal court.
Nintendo has long maintained an aggressive legal stance, doing everything in its corporate power to prevent millions of global gamers from playing unauthorized and pirated copies of software on its wildly popular hybrid Switch console. For years, this strategy has involved issuing a steady, relentless stream of cease-and-desist letters alongside targeted digital takedown notices across the internet. However, when those initial administrative warnings fail to curb the distribution of illicit material, the company has repeatedly proven that it is more than prepared to escalate matters by taking formal legal action in federal courtrooms.
The roots of this specific case date back to June 2024, when Nintendo initiated a high-profile copyright lawsuit at a federal court in Washington against Arizona resident James C. Williams, who was widely known throughout online emulation and gaming communities by his digital handle, ‘Archbox’. In the official complaint, Nintendo accused Williams of directly operating and maintaining several online "pirate shops." According to the filings, these digital storefronts provided the public with unauthorized access to vast libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games, allowing users to download copyrighted titles without purchasing them through official channels.
According to Nintendo’s detailed legal filings, Williams did not merely operate these illicit hubs in isolation; he actively promoted them on the popular online discussion platform Reddit, specifically within the r/SwitchPirates subreddit where he served as a prominent and leading moderator. The lawsuit alleged that Williams went far beyond simple promotion by helping community members install complex circumvention software designed to bypass the console’s security architecture. Furthermore, he allegedly solicited digital eShop gift card donations from users under the guise of acquiring games for preservation, which were then decrypted and added to the unauthorized pirate shops for public consumption.
Despite being fully aware of the serious legal jeopardy he faced, Williams never formally responded to the complaint filed against him. This persistent lack of cooperation and failure to mount a defense ultimately prompted Nintendo’s legal team to request a default judgment last October, seeking the maximum statutory damages allowed under copyright law, totaling $4.5 million, alongside a comprehensive permanent injunction to permanently halt his infringing activities.
Judge Grants Default Judgment
This week, U.S. District Judge Lauren King officially granted Nintendo’s motion for a default judgment in full. In her written order, Judge King emphasized that the defendant was unquestionably aware of the ongoing legal battle, noting that he had previously hired legal counsel specifically to object to a subpoena served to Google. Despite having access to legal representation at the outset, Williams ultimately chose to abandon his defense and failed to answer the formal complaint or engage with the court as the case progressed toward its inevitable conclusion.
Williams’s extensive and traceable history of public activity on Reddit ultimately did nothing to help his case in federal court and was heavily cited in the final judicial order. These archived social media posts clearly demonstrated to the court that the defendant possessed complete subjective knowledge that the games he was distributing were protected by copyright law, and that he chose to distribute them regardless of the legal consequences.
In one particular Reddit post highlighted directly within the court order, Williams explicitly referred to himself using the term "pirate" and bluntly stated that he was simply "not going to give Nintendo $50 for a game." This candid admission, alongside numerous other similar statements discovered during the investigation, cemented the court’s view that his infringement was not accidental or uninformed, but rather deliberate and willful.
$4.5 Million Damages Award
Nintendo’s legal representatives requested the statutory maximum of $150,000 per copyrighted title for a total of 30 specific games featured in the lawsuit. This carefully curated list included some of the company’s most commercially successful and critically acclaimed intellectual properties, such as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Judge King ultimately agreed with the calculation and reasoning provided by the publisher. With official retail prices hovering around $50 per title, the cumulative lost sales stemming from widespread unauthorized distribution could easily scale into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single title, and millions across the board. Because of this, the judge ruled that the maximum statutory damages request was "not an unrealistic estimate" of Nintendo’s actual financial damages resulting from the illicit distribution networks.
This financial calculation, combined with his own public statements acknowledging the illegal nature of his actions, made it abundantly clear to the presiding judge that Williams’s infringing activities were entirely willful. Consequently, she determined that the requested $4.5 million award was not only appropriate as compensation but also necessary as a punitive measure.
"Williams’s egregious infringement activities merit substantial punishment here," Judge King concluded in her written ruling.
As a tactical gesture of reasonableness during the proceedings, Nintendo elected not to seek additional statutory damages under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or demand reimbursement for its accumulating attorneys’ fees. This strategic decision did not go unnoticed by the federal judge, who explicitly noted in the court documents that this restraint worked favorably in supporting the decision to grant the maximum available copyright infringement damages.
Shops and Reddit Account Already Gone
In addition to the substantial financial penalty, Judge King also issued a robust permanent injunction against the defendant. This sweeping judicial order explicitly prohibits Williams from distributing any pirated Nintendo games whatsoever—not just the 30 specific titles explicitly listed in the initial complaint—as well as any software, code, or tools designed to circumvent the robust technological protections built into Nintendo’s proprietary games and hardware consoles.
Furthermore, the legal restrictions bar him from encouraging, assisting, or incentivizing other internet users to download pirated games or digital circumvention tools. To effectively enforce this wide-ranging ban, the court order explicitly mandates that Williams must permanently disable his pirate shops and all online accounts that he previously utilized to distribute, market, or promote the infringing materials.
The scope of this digital crackdown covers his primary Reddit account, alongside various associated social media and communication accounts on platforms such as Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, and Telegram that were identified as being instrumental to his infringing operations.
However, in practical terms, it appears that very little remains for the defendant to actually disable or take down. The infamous ‘archbox’ Reddit account has already been self-deleted by its user, and the various pirate shops named directly in Nintendo’s complaint were shut down long before the final judgment, with the vast majority going offline shortly after Williams received a formal cease-and-desist letter from Nintendo’s legal team back in March 2024.
By initiating this federal lawsuit, Nintendo publicly stated that its primary objective was to put a definitive stop to Williams’s widespread operational activities, while simultaneously sending a strong, unmistakable deterrent message to other operators within the global piracy community. Despite securing this decisive legal victory, successfully recouping the $4.5 million judgment will likely prove exceptionally difficult in practice, particularly given that the defendant has remained entirely unresponsive throughout the later stages of the litigation.
Although the final judgment rests completely in Nintendo’s favor, none of the underlying legal claims were vigorously tested through an adversarial trial. Because Williams ultimately failed to respond to the formal complaint, the federal court accepted the factual allegations outlined by the plaintiff as entirely true, resulting in a swift, uncontested victory for the multinational gaming corporation.
This particular outcome stands in notable contrast to Nintendo’s parallel copyright lawsuit against Modded Hardware, a separate enterprise that was filed on the exact same day in 2024. That parallel legal battle concluded late last year when its primary operator agreed to a separate $2 million settlement judgment to resolve Nintendo’s claims out of court.