You may recall an article we ran last month about Justin Success Brooks, a man accused of selling thousands of counterfeit Nintendo games from 2009-2011. We’d heard that he’d made around £600,000 during this time, and when accused, he’d pleaded guilty to all seven charges.
The court case on November 9th resulted in a sentence of 32 months jail time, though he’s expected to serve only half that.
Despite being issued a warning from Nintendo personally, he ignored it and kept selling the games—and his lawyer says that his customers were doing it out of concern for their own finances. He said that:
“If you read forums, for every person complaining about the sale of illegal games there are four or five complaining about the price of legitimate games.
He was taking a risk not on the understanding that what he was doing was criminal but on the understanding that he could be sued. It is theft at the heart of this, rather than complex fraud.”
Right. Is one really better than the other, when it comes down to the heart of the matter? That’s for gamers to decide—whether they should buy counterfeit games at the expense of the company making those games, and risking the company not being able to create more games in the future… or saving a few bucks.