Streamer who taunted Nintendo faces $7.5 million lawsuit for pirated Switch content

A streamer who gloated about relentlessly streaming unreleased and emulated Switch games is facing a $7.5 million lawsuit from Nintendo.

Nintendo is coming down hard on Jesse Keighin, aka “EveryGameGuru,” who had allegedly been streaming the pirated games on various platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, and Kick. These included The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.

According to the lawsuit filed in Colorado District Court on November 6, Keighin, despite prior DMCA takedown notices and cease-and-desist orders, reportedly continued streaming the games and even guided viewers on running Nintendo games on non-Nintendo hardware.

The streamer has been accused of making new channels on different platforms whenever one was taken down. The court documents claim he also taunted the game studio directly while doing so, allegedly stating things like, “You can try to stop me, but I’ll keep going.”

“On October 24, 2024, after certain platforms had taken down his unlawful streams as a result of Nintendo’s enforcement actions, he sent Nintendo a letter boasting that he has ‘a thousand burner channels’ to stream from and [he] ‘can do this all day,'” the lawsuit stated.

The lawsuit claims Keighin’s actions not only violate copyright but also encourage a “culture of infringement” impacting sales and hardware exclusivity.

The game studio has calculated the damages at $150,000 per infraction “on at least fifty occasions in the last two years,” resulting in a total claim of at least $7.5 million. They added: “At least ten different Nintendo games [were streamed] without authorization—all before those titles were released to the public.”

The Mario maker cited Keighin’s streaming of Mario & Luigi: Brothership on October 22, ahead of its November 7 release, as a key example.

The gaming giant’s aggressive stance underscores its long-running mission to clamp down on piracy and modders, especially when high-profile titles are involved. None has been bigger in the last year than its ongoing court case with the developers of Palworld over claims it copied Pokemon.