There's a lot going on with this particular story. On one hand, yeah, this guy sold modchips that allowed users to pirate games. Considering that many people bought these devices and the associated licenses to use them, there's going to be some revenue cut. However, how much Nintendo actually lost from the product is impossible to determine. He did fly a little too close to the sun though, promoting a product that allows you to pirate games, but you have to initially pay for it is very much putting a target on your back. Nintendo has fought against hardware manufacturers for years, even back in the DS days trying to keep DS flashcards at a minimum. But when one goes down, two pop back up so it's always a game of whack-a-mole trying to deal with these companies. Making money off of freely obtaining their products seems to be worse than just getting the products freely in the first place, and Nintendo has shown that here.
On the other hand, though, with the cost of things going up and up, I see why people resort to these kinds of things. A model of pay once, play all the time seems to be the most appealing, and having a device that lets you just copy all the games you could want is the ultimate solution. Thankfully, the product that was sold here has been superseded by free alternatives that are very easy to set up and require minimal tools to do. The Gateway 3DS card had the same fate, though it wasn't struck down by Nintendo, rather, all the free alternatives that came out just rendered those cards useless e-waste.
To me though, the valuation of $14.5 million is quite excessive, I don't think Nintendo's losses mounted to that much, even if you factor in the sales of all the devices that he sold in its lifetime, though if he's also responsible for the legal fees that might be a bulk of the cost. He'll certainly be paying that back for the rest of his life, it'll be a shadow from which he can't escape. I feel that Nintendo wanted a high valuation like this to set an example of what could happen to you if you try to pull this kind of stunt with their IP, as it'll be something that you will regret for the rest of your life.
