Man is the first person to be arrested on this charge after laws against modding were revised in November

A man from the Niigata prefecture was arrested in March for modifying and reselling Pokémon 3DS games, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Monday. This case marks the first arrest on this charge since the Unfair Competition Prevention Act was revised in November last year to tighten restrictions against the unlawful modification and distribution of data.

According to an insider connected to the investigation, the man, who is an office worker in his 30s, would sell his services by modifying data on Nintendo 3DS games. He extracted data from a second-hand copy of a Pokémon game and use it to overwrite the data of another game. He would then sell the altered game online for approximately 10,000 yen (US$92).

Upon his arrest, the man admitted his guilt and said that he could not stop because it earned him money. He was ordered to pay a fine of 300,000 yen (US$2,782).

The device the man used to modify the data was sold in a game-related appliance store in Tokyo. On June 7, the police began investigating the store on the suspicion that it was assisting with the crime.

Source: Yomiuiri Shimbun via Otakomu

Top image: Flickr/Bryan Ochalla

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