He didn’t even do anything, he’s the marketing guy!

Piracy is very popular right now, and Nintendo is no exception. Actually, Nintendo is very prone to piracy. Back in the 3DS era, a company called Team Xecutor made cartridges that allowed the 3DS to play unlicensed games loaded on an SD card in the cartridge. This meant you could put pirated games on it. This wasn’t an unintended side effect of the cartridge, it was clearly intended by them.

A member of Team Xecuter, Gary Bowser, was arrested and taken to prison back in 2020. He now owes $10 million dollars in damages to Nintendo. This means he’ll be paying %20-%30 of his salary to them for the rest of his life.

None of the other Team Xecuter members have been found out yet. Actually, none of the actual hackers have been found. Bowser did the marketing and brought their products to retailers. Despite not directly making the cartridges, he is the only one who has to pay them off. This has been an extremely controversial move on Nintendo’s part, despite Team Xecuter being an awful company. Out of all of the employees there, they picked the most innocent person to use as an example to the rest of them.

In an interview with Nick Moses, Bowser noted, “I’ve been making payments of $25 per month, which they’ve been taking from my income because I had a job in federal prison. So far I paid $175.”

Considering how much he owes and him now having a criminal record, it’s unlikely that he’ll find a job good enough to pay off the full $10 million dollars. That’s enough to buy roughly 23 Lamborghini Huracans, and Gary Bowser won’t get a single one.

“The agreement with them is that the maximum they can take is 25 to 30 percent of your gross monthly income. And I have up to six months before I have to start making payments”.

The average American makes $6,200 dollars a month. %30 of that is $1,860 dollars. Divide 10 million by that and you get 5,376 months, or 448 years.

It’s safe to say Gary Bowser won’t pay off his debt any time soon.