Nintendo is famously protective over its IP, but even some of its most closely held secrets, like the recently revealed Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, have been leaked ahead of their official announcements. That's despite the fact that, according to two of the company's former marketing leads, you were almost sure to lose your job if you were found to have mishandled confidential information.
Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, the ex-Nintendo marketing heads behind the popular Kit & Krysta podcast, speak at length about what it's like being responsible with Nintendo's secrets in a new episode of the show. Apparently, it's pretty stressful. Unsurprisingly, information about unannounced projects was handed out on a strictly need-to-know basis, and if you let it slip to anyone who wasn't approved to know, your career at Nintendo was at risk.
"There were some very clear lines for the people who were traveling with product," says Ellis. "It was like, yeah, lose the product, you lose your job. ... if you're responsible for the information getting out there in a reckless way you're probably gone."
Yang adds that being privy to "pieces of information was the most valuable commodity" working at Nintendo, because it meant the company trusted you with its secrets. But with great power, of course, comes great responsibility, and both Ellis and Yang admit they were "scared straight" of accidentally leaking something.
According to Yang, it was "hard to keep a secret because sometimes you struggle with like, 'ah I wish I could just tell that one other person because that would make my job a little easier, but I can't so I gotta be real cagey about the way I communicate with this person."
Regardless, Yang reiterates, "If the information got out and it was pinned to you as the reckless person that accidentally did that, it was very clear that that was going to be the end of your career at Nintendo."
Ellis and Yang previously said Nintendo's long-awaited reveal of the Ocarina of Time remake fell flat because of reputable rumors from noteworthy industry leaker Nate the Hate. You can argue that it also fell short of expectations because hardly anything was shown beyond a sleeping HD Link, but Ellis and Yang reckoned Nintendo was "looking to kill" following the leaks.
