Nintendo achieved victory in court against French filesharing service Dstorage on April 17 after the site was found to be hosting a range of pirated games made by the developer.
DStorage was confronted by Nintendo, which demanded the site remove ROMs that were hosted on its webpage. The site ignored these warnings, which prompted Nintendo to launch legal action directed at DStorage. Despite an attempt to appeal, French authorities sided with Nintendo, fining the site €442,750 ($485,000) for damages and €25,000 ($27,000) in legal fees.
Nintendo believes this to be a win against video game piracy and is pleased with the decision of the Paris Court of Appeals. The victory signals that share hosting sites similar to Dstorage will be held liable if they host a page that disseminates pirated games, ultimately encouraging culprits to take down content remotely similar to avoid fines or legal action.
The court decision was finalized amid Nintendo’s hunt for the person responsible for a leaked Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom art book, going as far as to send social platform Discord a subpoena that would reveal the identity of the leaker.
Things like this aren’t new for Nintendo, a company known to be protective of its intellectual property. Nintendo launched a lawsuit against RomUniverse in 2021, which resulted in the site’s owner being ordered to pay $2.1 million to cover damages.
There seems to be no sight to the end of Nintendo’s aggressive protection of their IPs. This legal win further emphasizes that file-sharing sites are not immune and might want to think twice about allowing pirated games to stay on their sites.
