Nintendo hacker Gary Bowser gets early release from 40-month prison sentence

Gary Bowser has been released from prison early, after being handed a 40-month prison sentence for his role in distributing hacking devices for Nintendo consoles.

In February 2022, Bowser pled guilty to two charges in relation to his work with Team Xecuter, a group that sold devices that circumvented anti-piracy measures on Nintendo hardware.

Just over a year into his sentence, Bowser has revealed that he was released from prison on March 28, 2023, in part due to good behaviour.

Speaking to Nick Moses in the below video (via TorrentFreak), Bowser has shared that he is currently being held at a detention centre in Washington as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities work to return him to his family in Toronto, Canada.

However, Bowser’s charges mean that once he is free, he will still have to continue paying back £8million ($10million) in court-ordered damages to Nintendo.

“I’ve been making payments of $25 [£20] per month, which they’ve been taking from my income because I had a job in federal prison. So far I paid $175 [£140],” shared Bowser, who explained Nintendo will be able to take a large percentage of future income he earns.

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

Looking ahead, Bowser said he will keep his “hands clean” and expressed an interest in managing Airbnb properties.

When Bowser was charged, Nintendo thanked U.S law enforcement and said that the activities of Team Xecuter and other piracy groups “cause serious harm to Nintendo and the video game industry”.

In other news, Nintendo’s upcoming Switch game The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom has cast Critical Role star Matthew Mercer as the voice of Ganondorf.