Sega Accused of Using Police Raid To Recover Nintendo Dev Kits After Office Disposal Error (timeextension.com)
- Reference: 0179169502
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/09/11/2011254/sega-accused-of-using-police-raid-to-recover-nintendo-dev-kits-after-office-disposal-error
- Source link: https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/09/sega-accused-of-using-police-to-recover-nintendo-dev-kits-it-had-negligently-disposed-of
City of London Police arrested the seller July 14, 2025, on money laundering charges, deploying approximately ten officers to seize the hardware. The seller claims the search warrant was defective and authorized Sega representatives to participate in the raid. Nintendo development kits remain the hardware manufacturer's property regardless of possession, outlet Time Extension writes. Police requested the seller relinquish ownership two days after releasing him from eight hours in custody, which he refused. Sega has not responded to multiple legal letters or six separate pre-action protocol claims from the seller.
[1] https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/09/sega-accused-of-using-police-to-recover-nintendo-dev-kits-it-had-negligently-disposed-of
It took me a bit to understand this (Score:2)
So these are Nintendo development kits Sega used to make games on Nintendo hardware and Nintendo are absolute dicks when it comes to their development hardware.
Sega sold the hardware by accident and now they're panicking because they're worried Nintendo is going to rake them over the coals over it.
So rather than do the sensible thing and contact the buyer and ask to buy it back after explaining the situation the idiots called the cops and of course the cops rolled in with 10 guys. It's UK so not sur
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Sega sold the hardware by accident
To me, it reads as though they threw it out, and the company handling the office waste sold it to the person who was raided.
but what if the hardware was sold to cover unpaid (Score:2)
but what if the hardware was sold to cover unpaid rent / debts?
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You can't sell what you don't own, it's still Nintendo's property.
but can Nintendo's say it's there property due to (Score:2)
but can Nintendo's say it's there property due to some EULA BS? while telling Sega they are buying an dev kit?
Can tesla sell dev kit cars with an car TITLE but hide in the EULA that they still own the car?
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> You can't sell what you don't own, it's still Nintendo's property.
I think it would qualify as abandoned, which would put it in a legal grey area in the UK. I don't think that it is clearly Nintendo's.
This is the City of London police, who seem to think that one of their roles is protecting the intellectual property of large companies.
This is interesting:
" Police requested the seller relinquish ownership two days after releasing him from eight hours in custody, which he refused. "
" requested " ... sounds like the police know they are on thin ice.
The fact that there has not be
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More often than you think.
Engineering and Military firms often hire these third parties to "haul away e-waste" and they don't wipe anything, they assume the stuff is going to be destroyed, not resold.
Belongs to the arrested man, not Sega. (Score:2)
Look, Sega paid someone to sell their stuff. He mistakenly sold something he should not have.
The guy purchased it fair and share, legally. It is his.
The fact that the Sega employee made a mistake is not relevant. He was authorized to sell Sega property and he did it.
Similarly, if you drop a box of old clothes at a charity, they get everything in the box. Even if you accidentally put something in the box you did not want to give away.
The principal is the same. Sega has no leg to stand on. They mistaken
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This is my thought too. Like finding cash in an old jacket. Or buying a painting and it turn out to be a masterpiece
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> The guy purchased it fair and share, legally. It is his.
Technically, it's not. As the summary mentions, Nintendo retains ownership of their dev kits. As such, Sega would not be authorized to sell the dev kits. From a legal standpoint, I'm not sure if that would provide grounds for Sega to demand the property back. From what little I can easily gather, I don't think Sega has any right to demand the reversal of sale, only request it. Nintendo, however, would still have the right to reclaim the property.
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We're talking about dev kits that are very much under a contract between two businesses. The buyer wouldn't have done anything wrong by buying it, but that doesn't necessarily mean he gets to keep it either. It would functionally be similar to unknowingly buying stolen property.
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> Look, Sega paid someone to sell their stuff. He mistakenly sold something he should not have.
> The guy purchased it fair and share, legally. It is his.
> The fact that the Sega employee made a mistake is not relevant. He was authorized to sell Sega property and he did it.
Actually, he sold Nintendo property that was being held in Sega's custody, which makes it a very different matter legally. Now whether Sega has any legal right to repossess it is another question. Nintendo likely does, but Sega's only right is probably the right to tell Nintendo what they did and let Nintendo go to court to try to get it back.
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Look, Sega paid someone to sell their stuff. He mistakenly sold something he should not have.
The guy purchased it fair and share, legally. It is his.
Actually It is his until a civil court rules otherwise .
This is not a criminal matter in that Sega did not deliberately steal Nintendo's property: They had legitimate possession of the property AND it was not a deliberate conversion, either -- it sounds like they negligently lost track of property that was bailed with them, and released the property to someone e
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^ this exactly.
I'm a little surprised that the Police were so easily led around by the nose and used force without establishing ownership.
idk UK law, but i hope this guy sues both Sega and the the Police for damages. And that the police fine Sega for filing false reports.
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> I'm a little surprised that the Police were so easily led around by the nose and used force without establishing ownership.
This is the City of London Police. I am not surprised at their actions.
Buybacks are not that easy (Score:2)
There is no way to know for sure how many units that person actually possesses, and upon making the offer, one can always lie and say they have less than the total number for any reason, a simple reason being disposing of a non-functional unit in the trash. All a nice under the table offer would result in is a sale of the majority of them with a massive profit, but with a few inevitably retained. A surprise raid by the cops offers a plausible way for SEGA to claim all possible lost devices which have not al
depends on what happened (Score:2)
if they where thrown out in the trash and recovered then nintendo no longer owned them , sinmply taking them from the officve is likely theft,
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if they where thrown out in the trash and recovered then nintendo no longer owned them
Nintendo would still have legal title to them if Nintendo was the legal owner and somebody else threw them in the trash without Nintendo's permission. They just don't have a criminal charge, AND they don't have a prima facie case. Nintendo would actually have to build a case disputing the ownership and providing evidence in court, then convince a Judge that they are in the right, And that money damages are not su
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but what about an junk removal companies that may just sell hardware to an scrap yard?
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> if they where thrown out in the trash and recovered then nintendo no longer owned them , sinmply taking them from the officve is likely theft,
They might have abandoned them. That puts Sega's rights to them in a grey area.
Someone at Sega needs to get a cheque book out and make this right. Clearly Sega screwed up, and is trying to weasel out of responsibility.
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> The article states that the title remains with Nintendo. That is absolutely false.
Nope. That only applies if the owner transfers those goods. What you're missing is that Sega didn't own this stuff in the first place, and therefore had no legal right to transfer it.
If someone sells stolen goods to a pawn shop and someone else buys those stolen goods, they still have to give them back if the rightful owner manages to track them down. This is legally no different, IMO.
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isn't he saying that Nintendo (owner) entrusted the goods to Sega.
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> isn't he saying that Nintendo (owner) entrusted the goods to Sega.
No, he's talking about Sega entrusting the goods to the scrap seller. Sega is not a retail merchant of electronics; it's a manufacturer. Entrusting that hardware to Sega almost certainly doesn't give Sega any particular right to transfer the title to someone else.
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This is provided in the UCC, "Any entrusting of possession of goods to a merchant who deals in goods of that kind gives him power to transfer
That is in the UCC, but I am sure Nintendo has a written contract that says otherwise. Language written in an explciit written contract between the parties supercedes all the defaults set out in the UCC. If contract states Sega does not have power to transfer title to the unit, then they do not have that power.
Of course another problem is that a console Developmen
City of London Police (Score:2)
It's worth knowing that the City of London Police are not the London police force. That would be the Metropolitan Police. The City of London is a tiny "city" measuring just one square mile within London as you'd normally think of it, filled with finance businesses and little else. (London also has a second tiny "city" within in, the City of Westminster.) Being officially a city, it has its own police force, but being a city of banks, its police are complete corporate stooges and used to do dirty business li
To Serve And Protect (Score:2)
The wealthy and the state.
Not so fast, Nintendo (Score:1)
> Nintendo development kits remain the hardware manufacturer's property regardless of possession, outlet Time Extension writes.
Maybe, maybe not. If a developer gets a dev kit, yes that's a lease not a sale and the company still owns the hardware. HOWEVER, if Sega or Nintendo signed a contract asking a third party liquidator to sell off the office contents, and the reseller purchased the hardware from the liquidator, that would constitute a legal sale.
Nintendo is going for gold... (Score:1)
...in the olympics of awful company behavior
We should all boycott them
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While I wouldn't necessarily disagree, how is that relevant to this story? They had no involvement.