Nintendo has come to a proposed settlement of $2 million with UberChips, one of two parties that the company filed a lawsuit against in May for piracy, according to a draft of the tentative resolution obtained by TorrentFreak.
Operated by Ohio resident Tom Dilts Jr., UberChips allegedly sold products from Team Xecuter, a notorious hacker group that jailbroke the Switch, allowing pirated games to be played on the console. The group was also responsible for producing the hardware and software necessary for the process.
“The group designs and manufactures an unauthorized operating system called the SX OS and accompanying piracy tools that install it,” according to the lawsuit.
The deal will require UberChips to destroy its remaining stock associated with Team Xecuter. Dilts won’t be allowed to maintain any online presence of his brand and the domain name will come under Nintendo’s possession. While both sides have consented to the agreement, the judge is yet to sign off on the deal.
UberChips’ website, which has since gone offline, was far from Team Xecuter’s only hawker. The site reportedly advertised its services on the hacker’s blog, however, marking it as a prime target.
Nintendo’s second case, filed against eight other site operators, is still ongoing. The company has been unsuccessful in identifying the corresponding owners, recently requesting a permanent injunction in an attempt to shut down said sites directly at its source, like domain registrars and hosting companies.
While Team Xecuter hasn’t been a direct target in any of these lawsuits, the group fired back at Nintendo, accusing the company of employing “legal scare tactics.”
“Of course we are not happy with this kind of censorship that is being enforced by legal injunctions that make us out to be something we are not: a copyright-infringing ring of software pirates,” Team-Xecuter told TorrentFreak in June.
Team Xecuter explained that its products could accomplish a variety of tasks unachievable on a stock Switch, such as making backups of cartridges, expanding storage, or running open-source software.
In a closed platform such as the Switch, jailbreaking can provide legitimate benefits for enthusiasts and aspiring programmers who want to get more out of their product. That’s what Team Xecuter believes in, anyway—that buying a Switch means that you own it and can do whatever you want with it.
“We are firm believers of the right to repair legislation, a growing movement to counteract the monopolistic control over hardware which is the property of the consumer who paid for it in the first place,” Team-Xecuter said.
