Nintendo announced today it has filed a lawsuit against the owner of HackYourConsole, a hacker website that sells devices which, among other things, allow pirated games to be played on Nintendo systems. The case was formally filed in the Southern District of Florida yesterday.
"The site blatantly promotes and sells unauthorized Nintendo games along with devices and services that circumvent the security in the Nintendo DS system and the Wii console," reads a press release issued by Nintendo. "The operator of HackYourConsole has developed a global business focused on selling unauthorized copies of Nintendo games and game-copying devices (such as the R4 device) used to circumvent the technological protection measures contained in the Nintendo DS family of hand-held systems. The website operator, for a fee, also provides services to hack and modify the Wii console and allow the play of illegal software."
The R4 device Nintendo referred to is a popular flash cart that can be used on DS to play games that have been illegally downloaded. It has other, more legitimate uses as well, such as playing homebrew content -- that is, games and applications that have been developed by users and then distributed on the Internet.
In addition to the sale of the DS R4 cards, HackYourConsole also offers pre-orders for the Gateway 3DS, an as-of-yet unreleased flash card that reportedly mimics much of the R4's functionality on 3DS.
Another of the site's functions is setting up the devices it sells for customers. It recently began offering a setup service for all of its flash carts, a process that involves loading emulators that can be used for playing downloaded games.
