Jesse Keighin faced over $1 million in potential damages when Nintendo sued him for streaming allegedly pirated copies of its games ahead of their official release. When the company initially issued copyright strikes against his channel, he reportedly responded by trolling the Mario maker and sharing ways to pirate its games. Keighin has now lost that lawsuit and owes Nintendo $17,500.
“The Court issues an injunction preventing Defendant from infringing Nintendo’s copyrighted works, including by streaming, and from trafficking in Switch emulators, Nintendo’s proprietary cryptographic keys, or other software or technologies that
circumvent Nintendo’s technological protective measures,” U.S. District Judge Gordon P. Gallagher wrote in an order issued earlier this week (via TorrentFreak).
The only thing the judge didn’t grant Nintendo was its request to confiscate and destroy any tools Keighin had used to pirate Switch games. Gallagher called that demand too “unclear” and “unreasonable” given the lack of evidence presented in the lawsuit as to how exactly Keighin had gained access to games like Mario & Luigi: Brothership to stream them ahead of release last fall.
But what’s most remarkable is how defiant Keighin remained throughout the entire case. “LOVE YA’LL! CAPITALISM IS CANCER! MY CHANNEL IS BEING DELETED FOR SHARING GAMEPLAY VIDEOS! THIS IS YOUR REWARD!” he posted on social media when he first caught the attention of Nintendo’s legal department. Even after the lawsuit was filed he continued to troll the company, despite not mounting any legal defense of his own.
In one of its court filings, the company alleged, “Finally, on November 20, 2024, after Nintendo’s outside counsel emailed Mr. Keighin the Summons and Complaint requesting he waive service and attaching the waiver form, he posted on Facebook, threatening her: ‘Think I’m your husband slut? Talk to me like you talk to him. I’ll fuck you up.’ The next day he posted, seemingly acknowledging his evasion of service: ‘Should have done more research on me[.] You might run a corporation[.] I run the streets[.]’”
But Keighin did not run the courts and his provocations now come with a hefty price tag attached. Nintendo has been on the warpath against anyone publicly promoting anything that could remotely promote piracy of its games, including makers of popular Switch emulators like Yuzu. The software let fans run copies of Nintendo’s games, including ones they had purchased, on higher-end PC hardware or alternative devices like the Steam Deck.
The aggressive crackdown came amid the launch of the Switch 2 which, for the time being at least, appears to remain piracy free. We’ll see how long Nintendo’s legal threats can keep it that way this time.
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