Gary Bowser, a hacker for Nintendo who was part of the hacking group Team Xecutor and got 40 months in prison and a fine of almost $15 million for piracy, has now been let out of prison. Bowser got out of jail early because he was a good boy and had already served a few months of his sentence. However, he still has to pay Nintendo $10 million for his part in letting Switch users hack their systems so they could play pirated games on them.
As part of the agreement Bowser made, Nintendo will be able to take “25-30%” of his monthly gross money. Bowser owes Nintendo $10 million, but he has only been able to pay $175 so far. He made this money while he was in jail. “I’ve been paying $25 a month, which they take out of my paycheck because I worked in federal jail. Bowser told Torrentfreak, “I’ve paid $175 so far.”
When Bowser was first sentenced, Nintendo’s lawyer, Ajay Singh, said in a court record (via Axios) that Nintendo wanted to “send a message” to other Switch hackers. “This is a really big deal for us. People buy computer games to keep Nintendo and its ecosystem going, and the games are what make people happy. “That’s why we do everything we can to stop people from stealing Nintendo games,” Singh told Axios last year.
Nintendo is known for going after hackers and software pirates who steal its video games. In a recent example, the company won a court case against Dstorage, which ran a cloud-storage site that held pirated games. The Paris Court of Appeals sided with Nintendo and told Dstorage to pay Nintendo more than $480,000 in damages and $27,285 in legal fees.