At 10:28 pm on November 1, an image of an unknown and classified Pokémon appeared in a Discord group. Gigantamax Machamp, the megasized version of the body-builder Pokémon, was slated to appear in the then-unreleased games Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. Within minutes, JPEGs of it were posted to 4chan. Then, on a dedicated Pokémon Reddit. It wasn’t long until 300 URLs were hosting it.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, who developed and published Pokémon Sword and Shield, said in a November court document that they had handled the games’ materials with the “utmost secrecy.” Background checks. Secure computers with secure storage mechanisms to which limited employees had access. Digital tracers. Key cards for building entrances. And, of course, non-disclosure agreements. After the levee broke, The Pokémon Company submitted takedown request after takedown request, but Gigantamax Machamp was uncontainable. In fact, it was only the beginning: Over the next 15 hours after the first Discord post, at least 18 other pictures of Pokémon leaked and proliferated—all from the game’s unreleased strategy guide.
Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the alleged leakers who had undermined their PR strategy. It wasn’t out of character; Nintendo’s lawyers and leak investigators are playfully referred to as “the Nintendo ninjas” among the leaking community. Yet over the last couple of months, Nintendo has taken action against multiple leakers. Ahead of the much-anticipated release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Nintendo’s traditional E3 digital press conference, it looks like the gaming giant is cracking down.
In addition to Nintendo’s suit against the Pokémon Sword and Shield leakers, Nintendo in mid-February
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
