Well, it looks like when it’s a match between Nintendo and pirate websites in a legal battle of the ages, Nintendo wins.
TorrentFreak reported on May 29, 2021 that a California court has just ruled in favor of Nintendo against now-defunct game download portal RomUniverse for uploading and distributing pirated Nintendo games. The site’s former owner, Matthew Storman, is now to pay $2.1 million USD in damages to the gaming giant. For the record, Storman is actually getting off lightly with this. You can read the full court documents, also from TorrentFreak, here.
Nintendo vs. RomUniverse: The Big Guy Wins
The battle between Nintendo and RomUniverse has apparently been a long and strange one. It started back in September 2019, when Nintendo filed suit against RomUniverse for copyright infringement. Even worse, RomUniverse was profiting from distributing their games. Apparently, users could pay for a premium account to be able to download an unlimited number of games. The website generated between $30,000-$36,000 in revenue, and it was actually Richard Storman’s primary income at the time.
Ultimately, this and his previous admission to uploading to his own site doomed Richard Storman’s fight against Nintendo. It’s kind of hard to claim you’re the innocent victim when you’re making money off of it. Thus, the courts found in favor of Nintendo, and ordered that Storman pay Nintendo that $2.1 million in damages. Amazingly, this is actually a good thing for Storman. Nintendo had originally wanted him to pay over $15 million in damages, but the courts thought this was way too much. Apparently, Storman is unemployed and had long since shut down RomUniverse by this point. Thus, the courts decided that any higher would be cruel and unusual punishment. Case closed.
Conclusion
Nintendo has won a legal battle against piracy today against RomUniverse and Richard Storman. They won so hard that the court decided to even take pity on the pirate, and had him pay far less than what the gaming giant wanted. It might be a small consolation given that he still has to pay $2.1 million, but at least it’s something. I guess pirated games will be on the downslide now.
Source: TorrentFreak, TorrentFreak
