Nintendo wins court ruling to block MIG Switch piracy device sales in Europe

Nintendo has secured a legal victory at the District Court of The Hague, getting the sale of MIG Switch devices and similar circumvention hardware ruled unlawful across Europe. The ruling specifically names the websites that were selling these devices to European customers and orders them to stop immediately.

The MIG Switch is a cartridge-style device that bypasses Nintendo's anti-piracy protections, letting players run illegal game copies downloaded from the internet. Nintendo had already been targeting the devices on the console side — last year the company started disabling online functionality for Switch consoles where these devices had been used. This new ruling goes further upstream, cutting off the retail pipeline before the hardware even reaches players. In its statement to press, Nintendo said the action was taken not only to protect its own IP but also "on behalf of the many video game developers globally that depend on legitimate sales of Nintendo video games."

Nintendo has been escalating its anti-piracy legal campaign for several years now. A console modder who tried to fight Nintendo in court without a lawyer was ordered to pay $2 million after refusing to shut down his business. The most high-profile case remains that of Gary Bowser — not the Mario villain, but an actual person who worked for a company selling circumvention devices — who served jail time and was hit with $14.5 million in damages, a sum he has said will follow him for the rest of his life. The Hague ruling is a civil matter handled by the District Court, entirely separate from the city's International Criminal Court.

Nintendo closed its statement with a direct warning to players: buying or using circumvention devices, circumvention software, or unauthorized game copies risks interfering with the functionality of legitimate Nintendo hardware and software. With European retail channels now legally blocked, the company appears to be systematically dismantling the MIG Switch supply chain one jurisdiction at a time.