Alleged Nintendo Switch Modder Faces Lawsuit Without a Lawyer

Key Takeaways

The alleged owner of hardware modding (Ryan Daly) company denies Nintendo’s claims without legal representation.
Nintendo’s lawsuit against Daly for game piracy moves to the discovery process for evidence collection.
Should courts rule in favor of Nintendo, Daly might have to compensate for “millions in damages.”

The alleged owner of Modded Hardware, the company behind many pirated Nintendo IPs and Switch consoles, has responded to Nintendo’s legal complaint against him without legal counsel.

Nintendo Insider Claims Switch 2 Will be Revealed Before End of This Year

According to the leak, the Switch 2 will be revealed in 2024, and launch in 2025

Nintendo sued Ryan Daly, the man behind the audacious attempt at self-representation, in July over his alleged company’s creation and distribution of modded Switch consoles, pirated games, mod chips and enabling game piracy.

The company also sued “Archbox,” another alleged operator of pirated Nintendo games and consoles stores and mod on r/SwitchPirates subreddit.

Daly replied to the majority of Nintendo’s complaints with “denied.” He also denied Nintendo’s claim of his ownership over Modded Hardware, saying “[the] defendant is without sufficient information to either admit or deny the allegations of this paragraph, and on that basis, denies them.”

He also invoked 17 affirmative defenses – facts that mitigate the damage caused by the defendant’s actions despite them being unlawful – without elaborating on them.

The Japanese company has said that it offered Daly a chance to avoid legal trouble by ceasing operations. Despite allegedly accepting the deal, Modded Hardware continued operations.

Now that Daly has replied, the case has moved to the discovery process, where both parties can collect evidence for use in court.

While Daly’s abstaining from legal council is odd, especially against a company with a legal track record like that of Nintendo, it’s unclear if this will continue into court proceedings.

A Line of Court Cases That Goes Around The Corner

In September, Nintendo sued Pocketpair over their game, Palworld, over patent infringement. However, these cases are only a few out of many lawsuits filed by the Japanese giant against perceived threats to its IPs.

In 1989, Nintendo sued Blockbuster over their game rentals, arguing for copyright infringement due to copying game manuals.

Nintendo was eventually handed one of its few legal losses, given the odd claim made by the prosecution, but that seemed only to intensify Nintendo’s future legal battles.

Years later, in 2015, Nintendo tried, and succeeded for a while, to rake in the money made by YouTubers playing their games for Lets Plays.

At the time, the company argued that creators violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)— the same act levied against Modded Hardware and others.

Nintendo Lawsuit Halts Palworld PS5 Release in Japan

The lawsuit covers Pokémon patent infringements and may keep Japanese gamers on the PC version of Palworld indefinitely.

Although they discontinued this practice after widespread backlash, Nintendo has battled Zelda and Smash multiplayer mods, hundreds of fan-made games, and custom controllers.

Nintendo’s actions, despite being legally sound at times, have pushed away many fans and would-be fans from their IPs; someone never told them that what you can do isn’t always what you should do.

Still, Modded Hardware and Co aren’t releasing labors of love; thousands of players and creators probably won’t campaign for the modding company.

As of writing, the Modded Hardware website has been made private.

Without the support of the Nintendo customer base, nor legal council telling him otherwise, the owner of Modded Hardware might find himself millions in debt to Nintendo— whoever he turns out to be.