The Pokémon Company International is chasing four "John/Jane Does" who leaked sensitive information about Sword & Shield before its official release date. The new Pokémon game for Nintendo Switch hit the shelves on November 15, but looks like the gaming community already knew too much about its features on that date.
On November 1, a picture of the new Pokémon Gigantamax Machamp was posted on Discord, a popular social media platform dedicated to the gaming community. The Gigantamax versions of some Pokémon characters are exclusive to the Sword & Shield game, and they have extra power other than unique G-Max moves. Minutes later, the same pic appeared on Reddit and 4Chan, another social media platform widely used by anime fans. Additionally, other 18 unseen pictures from a strategy guide of the game were shared on Discord. As a natural consequence, the leaked pictures from Sword and Shield ended up on mainstream social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, reaching thousands of users. More precisely, Pokémon Company International found 300 web pages containing unauthorized pictures from the newly-released game.
According to Forbes, the company behind Pokémon Sword & Shield hired Perkins Coie, a law firm that already worked with Google and other huge tech companies, to solve the case. The lawyers have been able to identify four Discord users who could be responsible for the leak: it is believed that one of them passed the images on to the other users, who then proceeded to share them or help with their diffusion. However, the nicknames of the defendants haven't been linked to their real-life identities yet. Additionally, Pokémon Company International is planning to serve subpoenas on both Discord and 4Chan, to get the platforms' help in finding the leakers. The Pokémon Company's lawsuit has been filed on November 22, and is now awaiting the court's decision.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that a gaming giant has to deal with online leaks. Last October Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, sued a former beta tester for breaking his non-disclosure agreement and posting on Twitter about some unreleased features.
While social media platforms are a valuable resource for gaming companies to advertise their upcoming releases to their fans, they can be a double-edged sword, that makes it incredibly easy for unscrupolous users to diffuse unauthorized material among thousands of players. While the leakers may feel a temporary sense of pride for being the first to announce the new features, most players would probably prefer not to have the surprise ruined by some random folk on the Internet.
Pokémon Sword & Shield is available now on Nintendo Switch.
Source: Forbes