Nintendo goes on piracy warpath suing LiberiaShop & MIG Switch at the same time

Nintendo of America has issued a lawsuit to modders over the MIG Switch. The lawsuit was filed June 28, and published July 1. The company is seeking “damages, injunctive relief, and other equitable relief” under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act).

Nintendo’s suit revolves around the MIG Switch’s main capabilities, which are designed to circumvent the copy protection embedded in the Switch. 

MIG stores games on an SD card placed into a fake cartridge. This effectively tricks the hardware into thinking an official game was inserted. When users want to swap games, they just have to eject and reinsert it.

Nintendo has also taken issue with MIG’s makers, Modded Hardware, selling modding tools, chips, and even pre-modded consoles.

While the first run of Nintendo Switch consoles was easily hacked thanks to an oversight, almost every console since its second run from 2018 onwards has fixed this issue.

As such, the only real way to alter the OLED or newer versions of the console is to open it up and solder a mod chip to it. The MIG was intended to avoid having to do this process.

With the suit now in the process, it appears that Nintendo has taken over the domain migswitch.com, however, MIG Switch’s store is still online. 

In February, Nintendo sued the owner of the Switch emulator, Yuzu, for $2.4 million. The emulator was also forced to shut down.

LiberaShop targeted by Nintendo lawsuit

On top of this lawsuit, another piracy source is also being sued. Filed on the same date, Nintendo is also training its sights on the LiberaShop owner.

Renamed LiberiaShop, it integrates with Tinfoil, content management software that connects to different “free shops” to provide pirated games. This allows users to download games straight onto the Switch.

While other “shops” have mostly begun to dissipate from the public eye or gone entirely private, LiberiaShop was publicly operating up to April 6.

A Reddit thread from two months ago indicated something was wrong. A user who inquired about the current state of the shop was banned. LiberiaShop’s public Telegram channel also hasn’t been updated since April 1.

However, the Telegram channel does state that the content was hosted in Monrovia, Liberia. The message appeared to be more concerned with branding, than anything else.

Nintendo’s lawsuit mentions that it is also suing Archbox, the owners of LiberiaShop, as they were accepting donations and crowd-sourcing “dumps” of Switch games to fill in gaps in their offering.

LiberiaShop’s owners have operated under different names, with the main person behind it, Archbox, using “Jack-in-the-Shop” and “Turtle in the Shop” as previous shop names.

Nintendo has pointed out that Archbox has scrubbed their Github page from the web, and begun deleting social media.

The gaming giant’s warpath against piracy continues. A previous suit against Gary Bowser resulted in a lifetime of repayments to the company.