Nintendo wins major French piracy case with EU-wide consequences: 'Significant not only for Nintendo, but for the entire games industry'

Nintendo has won a lengthy legal battle in the French Supreme Court against the company Dstorage, which owns and operates the file-sharing website 1fichier.com, in a judgement which the Japanese giant trumpets as a victory "for the entire games industry."

The verdict follows years of hearings and appeals, and means that any file-sharing company based in Europe must remove illegal copies of games when asked to do so by the copyright holder. If they don't they can now be held accountable for the content, and face huge fines.

"Nintendo is pleased with the court's finding of liability against Dstorage," reads a statement provided to Eurogamer.

"The French Supreme Court leaves no doubt that sharehosting providers like 1fichier.com are not a safe haven for storing and sharing illegal content.

"Nintendo's message to consumers is not to download pirate copies of Nintendo games as this increases the risk that this will interfere with the functionality and experience that playing legitimate Nintendo games on authentic Nintendo hardware provides."

Nintendo took action against Dstorage after the company ignored requests to stop hosting illegal copies of Nintendo software. In 2021 a Paris court found that Dstorage was indeed hosting pirated games and ordered that it pay Nintendo €935k (£783k / $1 million) in damages. Dstorage appealed this decision but lost in 2023 and was ordered to pay further costs.

Dstorage's final avenue was the French Supreme Court, where it argued that a court order was required before it had to remove specific content from its file-sharing services. The court rejected this argument, and that will be the final judgment in this matter.

Nintendo has always been fiercely protective of its properties, but in recent years it has stepped up its war against emulation and piracy: Some have even called it a "vigorous legal bully." Over 2022-2024 Nintendo:

• Went after a PC application that assigns box art to your non-Steam games because it had Nintendo art in the database.
• Threatened a YouTuber/modder with copyright strikes until he took down a Breath of the Wild multiplayer mod.
• Blocked the release of the Dolphin emulator on Steam by warning Valve not to even think about it.
• Killed a Portal 64 demake in development for genuine N64 hardware: This was nixed not because of the Portal IP, but because Valve didn't want to deal with the inevitable Nintendo fallout.
• DMCA'd a Palworld Pokémon mod as the game was blowing up.
• Sued the developers of the Yuzu Switch emulator, killed the project, and settled for millions of dollars before a judge could decide if there is anything illegal about Yuzu.
• Killed the Citra 3DS emulator, made by the same Yuzu group.
• Nuked 20 years' worth of Nintendo-related Garry's Mod creations.
• Filed a patent lawsuit against Palworld
• Sicced the lawyers on the last Switch emulator standing, Ryujinx

It should be said that Nintendo's situation is unique: It makes specialised hardware, and software that is only available (in theory) on that hardware. This is why no-one else in the games industry hates emulation quite as much as the Big N, which draws no distinction between emulation and piracy.

This reaches a point of overreach, some would say, when Nintendo's going after things like Mario in Garry's Mod, or fan games, and some would even say Palworld. After all, Palworld may be undeniably derivative of Pokémon in some respects, but no-one could claim it's a Pokémon-like experience. That lawsuit, at least, will be interesting.

As for Dstorage, it was hosting pirated copies of Nintendo games, refused to comply with takedown requests, and then tried to put the legal burden back on Nintendo. I imagine the French Supreme Court's view on this could be summed up as "non, merci." Nintendo, for its part, thinks this is a victory for the industry at large.

"Nintendo is pleased with the Court’s finding of liability against Dstorage and believes that it is significant not only for Nintendo, but for the entire games industry.”