Gary Bowser: the hacker who owes 14 million to Nintendo for piracy tells his story

The Guardian interviewed Gary Bowseror the hacker at the center of one of the most discussed anti-piracy operations, who told the drama of his situation, for which he now finds himself having to return $14 million to Nintendoafter prison.

The character in question seems to have a rather optimistic outlook, to be honest, claiming that “it could be much worse”, and that he has actually experienced worse situations such as when he lived homeless in his early twenties. The story has long been known: Bowser, whose name is incredibly fitting, was considered a key figure of the Team Xecutera group that has produced hardware and software capable of encouraging piracy on Nintendo platforms.

For this reason, he was arrested, spent a few months in prison and is now free, but will have to give the company 30% of his earnings for life, to try to repay the 14 million dollar compensation requested by the house of Kyoto. The Guardian article obviously does not want to rehabilitate Bowser, who is well aware of the crimes committed, but a particular portraitas well as highlighting the somewhat Kafkaesque situation he currently finds himself in, based on the sentence imposed on him.

A complicated life, but “it could be worse”

After a life spent repairing various types of hardware and managing an internet cafe, in 2010 he moved to the Dominican Republic and subsequently came into contact with Team Xecuter, for which he was officially paid only for update the website (for a few hundred dollars) but who then became a sort of intermediary between hardware and software manufacturers and testers, becoming more and more involved in the matter.

For this reason his name probably emerged more clearly than other members of the team with higher responsibilities, and he reluctantly became the central element of the spectacular police operation that became one of the largest in the context of fight against piracy: “The day it happened, I was sleeping in my bed, at four in the morning and I had been drinking all night,” says Bowser, “All of a sudden I wake up and I see three people standing around my bed, pointing guns at my head They dragged me out, put me on a truck and took me to the Interpol office.”

He was arrested right at the height of the Covid pandemic, which complicated things somewhat also because he fell quite seriously ill with the disease in question during the period in custody. Bowser's case, according to Nintendo itself, was supposed to be exemplary, send a message so that all the people involved with piracy knew what could happen to them, and for this reason the treatment was particularly severe, also in relation to his actual role within Team Xecuter, for which he was officially only responsible for the updates on the site.

Bowser said he could probably fight most of the charges, but would fight 13 charges. it would have cost too muchin terms of time and money, so he found it easier to plead guilty and be charged with two counts, which still ended up requiring $14 million in compensation.

The long and impossible road to compensation

Bowser started to repay Nintendo already from prison, where he remained only 14 months out of the 40 expected thanks to good behavior, sending the company around 25 dollars a month, collected through socially useful work carried out directly in the penitentiary, but will have to continue to pay around 30% of his earnings to Nintendo for the rest of your life, outside of expenses necessary for survival.

“I'll pay them what I can, which won't be a lot of money, that's for sure,” Bowser reported, but he still thinks “it could be worse“, considering that he managed to find a house to rent and manages to earn money for survival every month, although this is also complicated by his precarious health situation, with the need for physiotherapy due to his elephantiasis in one leg, for who manages to pay also thanks to a GoFundMe initiative in her name.