Jail for Hacking Pokemon in Japan
Japan has begun prosecuting people who violate fair competition rules and sell digitally modified Pokémon on the black market. One of the offenders has already been caught red-handed.
- The owners of the Pokemon brand are beginning to draw consequences for the actions of players who choose to modify the source files of games from the said series;
- Japanese police have joined the action and have already caught a 23-year-old offender trading a modified Pokemon called Sobble.
Let's face it, downloading games from illegal sources, as well as tinkering with the code for profit, have never been universally praised behaviors. Still, they didn't become blameworthy crimes that law enforcement agencies were interested in. Well, unless we move to Japan for a moment to see how the police deal with this type of transgressions. In addition, this case involves a specific brand, namely the well-known Pokemon.
What is it about? Just move to the official website of the Pokemon series to find out. However, we assume that you do not know Japanese very well, so we will quickly translate the gist of the message posted there. It has been confirmed that the illegal activity of players has been noticed in terms of modifying the data of the following productions - Pokemon Sword/Shield and Pokemon Home. It was also assured that appropriate measures will be taken to prevent such actions.
We did not have to wait long to find out that the words contained in the announcement were not idle talk. A 23-year-old Japanese man was caught hacking the game. He modified the code for one of the Pokemon, Sobble, and then sold the illegal version for 4400 yen. On all transactions he earned a total of over a million yen, which is about $9.5 thousand (via Kotaku).
The amount of money is large enough to attracted the attention of local authorities, who caught the criminal, and now bring him to court, where he will answer under the Act on Prevention of Unfair Competition. What can you say, another success of the Japanese police. The force even boasted of its intervention and made public the photo of the computer (captured by Eurogamer) used as a tool for the crime.
