Gamers love Nintendo. And why wouldn’t we? The company has given us hours and hours of fun over the years with Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Metroid, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Smash Bros., and many more. The success of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Super Mario Bros. Movie is all the evidence you need that a love for Nintendo's stable of characters unites players — lapsed, casual, and hardcore — across several generations.
It's that affection that makes it hard to talk about how cruel Nintendo's business practices can be, but how else can you describe 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:what Nintendo is doing to Gary Bowser?
Bowser was sentenced to 40 months in prison back in February 2022 for his role as part of Team Xecuter, a hacking enterprise that sold modchips allowing buyers to hack their Switch or 3DS and play bootleg games. Bowser confessed to his part as a salesman for Team Xecutor and served 14 months before getting out on good behavior. While he was sentenced to just over three years in prison, Nintendo pursued a harsher sentence, asking the judge in Bowser's case for at least five.
Though Bowser is now out of prison, he isn't out of the woods. In addition to the prison term, his sentence came with $14.5 million in fines, $10 million of which he will eventually have to pay back to Nintendo. Bowser will almost certainly be paying those fines off for the rest of his life.
“The maximum [Nintendo] can take is between 25 pe♋rcent and 30 percent of your monthly gross income, and I have up until, like, six months before I have to start making pa🍃yments," Bowser told YouTuber NickMoses 05. While working in prison, Bowser was able to earn $175 toward his debt. So, just $9,999,825 left to go.
Obviously, Bowser broke the law. He confessed to as much in court. But, for the seven years that he worked with Team Xecutor, he made only $320,000. That isn't nothing. But Nintendo is asking him to pay back more than 31 times what he made, in addition to his prison term. The company is clearly making an example of Bowser, sending a message to would-be hackers that it will go out of its way to ruin their lives. And, given how expensive basic necessities have become over the past year due to inflation and stagnant wages, giving up 25-30 percent of your income is a major hurdle standing between Bowser and the possibility that he can ever live a normal life again.
That sucks, and this isn't the only time Nintendo has pursued hackers and leakers with extreme prejudice. Recently, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo subpoenaed Discord, compelling the company to hand over the private information of a user who leaked the forthcoming Tears of the Kingdom artbook online. The company has frequently gone after developers making fan games, like 2016's unofficial Metroid 2 remake, AM2R, . And, in March, Nintendo dem🀅anded a GameStop employee lose his job after he leaked pictures of a Tears of the Kingd⛦om Switch OLED꧒.
Nintendo is able to remain insulated from criticism for the same reason Disney often has. It owns characters that we like. A going around recently had far-right operatives like Roger Stone sharing pictures of themselves as children with the caption, "When you call me an alt right fascist this is to whom you're speaking." Nintendo is able to do a far more effective version of this gambit because, unlike young Roger Stone, Mario doesn't look like a member of the Hitler Youth. The tactic is the same, though. By associating its brand with the characters that gamers love, Nintendo can remain lovable (and get free online defense) while ruining a man's life for a tiny fraction of its profits.
But Nintendo isn't the cuddly characters its developers have created. It's a corporation fiercely defending its bottom line. Its games may ask us to imagine ourselves as heroes like Link or Mario. But in this case it's much easier for me to identify with Bowser.