You can extract the chip’s serial number in software trivially. In Windows, from a commandline:

wmic cpu get pricessorid

I’m positive you can do the same with some Linux command, and failing that certainly with basically every vaguely modern benchmarking tool. Same deal with hard drives and probably also video cards. My BIOS/UEFI even enumerates all my connected hard drive serial numbers on screen if I interrupt its graphical boot screen.

Given that the anti-cheat schemes these competitive games are literal rootkits, I don’t think gathering the user’s hardware serial numbers in order to attempt identify them is much of a stretch.

Mine too. That’s what I spent my one (1) 5.25" external bay on.

The old tower that’s stacked full of other disk drives is in the basement, where I can get to it if I ever need it. I find myself needing it more often than you’d think, usually courtesy of others who just rediscovered some irreplaceable personal thing on some damn fool floppy disk or another that they want back.

Location, location, location. Be somewhere that has lax or absent laws enabling foreign entities to prosecute you for this sort of thing and has no extradition treaty with Japan and/or the US. And remain anonymous and avoid identification. This guy was a reddit mod and lived in friggin’ Arizona, both of which were bad moves on his part. So I imagine Nintendo or the courts subpoenaed reddit for everything they had on the guy and they eagerly complied.

If you lived in, say, Cambodia and only distributed your stuff through decentralized or anonymized channels and did not seek fame or fortune for yourself it’s pretty likely nobody would actually be able to bring the hammer down on you for it.

My old Galaxy S5 would work without the battery, including bootup. So it’s not entirely unexpected that other phones could also do so. I would say I can’t imagine who would take the time out out of their day to just talk out their ass and claim something like this wouldn’t work without trying it first. Except then I remember this is the internet, and people do that all the time.

Regardless, good on you for making this all work!

Yeah, well. I’ll 3D print you some GTA themed swag and put it in a box that also doesn’t include the game, except I’ll do it for $375. How about that?

Again. Anyone remember Shoutcast?

Anyway, the old versions of Winamp work just fine for playing your local library.