Someone new has felt the wrath of Nintendo’s lawyers, as a streamer is forced to cough up £13,300 for broadcasting pirated Switch games.
Nintendo’s ruthlessness when it comes to dishing out lawsuits has been well documented, but it has particularly escalated over the past couple of years.
Over recent months, Nintendo has demanded £3.3 million in damages from someone who sold pirated Switch games, sent one person to prison in Japan for modding Switch consoles, and left another gamer with £1.4 million in debt, after they took on Nintendo without a lawyer.
Nintendo’s aggressive legal pursuits are common knowledge, but despite all these cases, it hasn’t stopped others from thinking they’re above the law.
On October 29, 2025, a Colorado federal court ruled in favour of Nintendo in a new lawsuit, ordering Jesse Keighin to pay up $17,500 (£13,332) in damages for streaming leaked Switch games before release.
Keighin has also been hit with an injunction preventing him from ‘infringing Nintendo’s copyrighted works, including by streaming, and from trafficking in Switch emulators, Nintendo’s proprietary cryptographic keys, or other software or technology that circumvent Nintendo’s technological protective measures.’
Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Keighin in 2024, after he streamed gameplay footage ‘on at least 50 occasions’ of ‘at least 10 different games without authorisation and before the games were released to the public’.
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The most recent example cited in the lawsuit was a pirated copy of Mario & Luigi: Brothership, which he streamed 16 days before its release date. Other games on his illegal streaming schedule included Super Mario Party Jamboree, The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom, Pikmin 4, Splatoon 3, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
Nintendo is said to have submitted ‘dozens’ of takedown notices to remove Keighin’s livestreams and shut down his channels, but he kept making new accounts to stream pirated games and share links to emulators.
Incredibly, Keighin is said to have bragged to Nintendo in an email, writing ‘I have a thousand burner channels’ and ‘[w]e can do this all day’.
According to a report on TorrentFreak, Keighin taunted Nintendo’s lawyers on Facebook, writing: ‘Should have done more research on me. You might run a corporation, I run the streets.’
Nintendo filed subsequent motions in March 2025 after Keighin didn’t respond to the initial lawsuit. The company said it could have asked for more damages (upwards of $100,000) but it only sought $10,000 for the latest infringement, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, along with $7,500 for 15 violations related to ‘circumvention and trafficking activities’.
Both of these payments were approved in the final judgement, but two requests for a permanent injunction by Nintendo which called for Keighin to ‘destroy all circumvention devices’ were rejected, because the request was ‘unclear’ and ‘unreasonable’.
Nintendo has previously gone after YouTubers who promoted Switch emulators in videos. It’s strong stance against piracy has led to the shutdown of several Switch emulators, including Yuzu and Citra.
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