Nintendo have been making it known that hosting pirated ROMs of other Nintendo products is a breach of copyright and they've recently being doubling down on their approach. This time, the company has taken action (and won) in a court case againse two site owners in the USA.

A husband and wife from Arizona have been taken to a federal court by the company, following legal action that began taking place earlier this year. Jacob and Cristian Mathias were accused of "massive copyright and trademark infringement" regarding their sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co.

After the initial complaint was filed to court in July, Mathias and his wife immediately took both sites down out of fear, alongside multiple other ROM site owners who did not want to be next. It turns out that both Mathias and Nintendo did not want to go through the long process of a court case, so settlement discussions began swiftly.

TorrentFreak reports that today, a settlement figure of $12,230,000 USD was reached in potential damages.

The amount is extremely high for such a low-profile defendant, and may be to warn other ROM site operators to cease operations or face consequences. Whether or not the couple will actually pay off the full settlement amount, we do not know.

The couple were also forced to hand over control of both sites to Nintendo and if you visit LoveRetro.co or LoveROMS.com, the following message is displayed:

"Our website, LoveROMS.com/LoveRetro.co, previously offered and performed unauthorized copies of Nintendo games, in violation of [] copyrights and trademarks. LoveROMS.com/LoveRetro.co acknowledges that it caused harm to Nintendo, its partners, and customers by offering infringing copies of [its] games and has agreed to cease all such activities. To access legitimate Nintendo games online, please visit [our site] for information about the [Game Store]."

We'll update you if anything else arises regarding this story as news develops.