By Sagar V. Mankar 
Nintendo has secured two major legal victories this week in its ongoing campaign against video game piracy.
The first major win came against French file-sharing company Dstorage, which operates the website 1fichier.com. After years of legal proceedings and multiple appeals, Nintendo finally obtained a definitive ruling from France’s highest judiciary court. This landmark decision establishes that European file-sharing companies must remove illegal copies of games when requested or face substantial financial penalties.
The legal battle with Dstorage began in 2021 when the Judicial Court of Paris ordered the company to pay Nintendo €935,000 (approximately £773,000) in damages for hosting pirated games. Dstorage appealed this ruling but lost again in 2023 and was ordered to pay additional costs to Nintendo.
Still refusing to concede, Dstorage took their case to the highest French judiciary court, arguing they shouldn’t have to remove content from their hosting services without a specific court order. This final appeal has now failed, bringing the long-running legal dispute to a conclusive end.
In a statement shared to Eurogamer, Nintendo described this victory as “significant” not just for itself, but for “the entire games industry.”
The second major victory this week came in a separate case involving counterfeit merchandise. A Seattle district judge issued a default judgment in favor of Nintendo and Amazon against sellers of fake amiibo cards on Amazon’s marketplace. The court awarded over $7 million in trademark infringement damages after the defendants failed to respond to the lawsuit.
Specifically, Nintendo sought $705,963 against one seller who operated several accounts, $6.2 million against another seller with multiple accounts, and $47,652 against both for a shared account, as per court documents reported by Polygon.
Amazon had already shut down the sellers’ accounts before filing the original complaint in October 2023. The companies noted in their legal filing that “Nintendo utilises both internal and external resources to combat counterfeit and infringing products” and works collaboratively with Amazon to identify and remove listings that violate Nintendo’s intellectual property rights.
These two legal victories are part of Nintendo’s broader anti-piracy strategy. The company has been actively pursuing legal action against various forms of game piracy over the past year. One notable case was the shutdown of the Switch emulator Yuzu, whose creator agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million (approximately £1.89 million) in damages.
Nintendo has also targeted individuals involved in piracy. Last summer, the company tracked down a moderator of the SwitchPirates Reddit community, claiming this person operated “several pirate shops” selling “massive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games.” Nintendo is seeking millions of dollars in damages in this ongoing case.
In November 2024, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against a streamer who regularly played pirated copies of Nintendo games before their official release dates, including titles like “The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom” and “Mario & Luigi: Brothership.”
Perhaps the most high-profile legal action from Nintendo, however, is its ongoing patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair. This Pokémon-inspired game has attracted over 32 million players since its release a year ago, but the legal case currently remains unresolved.