Following the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s widely reported seizure of pirate ROM site Nsw2u.com last week, the US government agency has confirmed the move was part of an operation that impacted “multiple” targets.
In a statement shared on its website, the FBI announced “the seizure of several online criminal marketplaces” that it said had, “for more than four years”, provided access to “pirated copies of highly anticipated video games days or weeks before their official release date”. It also claimed these websites had seen cumulative downloads of 3.2m in just three months this year – from 28th February and 28th May – resulting “in an estimated loss of $170m”.
On top of Nsw2u’s closure, the FBI says its investigation – performed with the assistance of the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service in the Netherlands – had additionally resulted in authorisation to seize the domain of “multiple” other sites, including nswdl.com, game-2u.com, bigngame.com, ps4pkg.com, ps4pkg.net, and mgnetu.com.
“These domains hosted and facilitated access to the pirated video games,” it continued. “Anyone visiting these sites will now view a seizure banner that notifies them the domain has been seized by federal authorities.”
The FBI’s operation is just the latest move in an ongoing crackdown against video game piracy. Earlier this year, Nintendo won a legal battle against French file-sharing company Dstorage, meaning European file-sharing companies must now remove illegal copies of games when asked to do so. It also successfully shut down Switch emulator Yuzu last year, after claiming the software facilitated piracy “at a colossal scale”.