Upcoming Nintendo Switch game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been leaked online, according to VGC.
A pirated version of the much-anticipated game has been distributed online, and videos of the game have appeared on streaming platform Twitch.
While the majority of these streams have been taken offline, there were still a small number of people apparently streaming the game on Twitch at the time of reporting.
When is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom out?
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is due out on May 12. If you have a copy pre-ordered, it’s a good idea to approach social media and YouTube carefully if you want to avoid spoilers.
This is the second major piracy leak that has affected the game. In February 2023, its official art book was distributed on Discord. It led to Nintendo filing for a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoena in a California district court. This aimed to get the platform to reveal the identity of the person sharing the document online.
The source of the leak of the game itself, a much more serious breach, is not known.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will have been pirated as a ROM file. This means it can be played on PC through a Nintendo Switch emulator as well as on hacked Switch consoles.
How Nintendo tackles piracy
Nintendo is highly proactive in tackling unauthorised distribution of its games. Nintendo in 2018 sued Jacob and Cristian Mathias, who ran a couple of popular retro gaming sites for distributing its games online. This led to a settlement of almost £10 million, according to Torrentfreak.
In 2020, Nintendo won a £1.5 million case against Uberchips, which sold tools used to hack Switch consoles.
A Nintendo Switch hacker called Gary Bowser was released from prison in April 2023, having been sentenced in February 2022, for his part in creating tools that let people modify their Switch consoles. Bowser has been ordered to pay £11.6 million in damages, and Nintendo may demand up to 30 per cent of his earnings until this debt is paid. These are just some of the Nintendo legal cases of the last few years.
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s predecessor Breath of the Wild has sold more than 30 million units to date. Nintendo Life reported the game needed to sell only two million copies to turn a profit, when it launched in 2016.
Tears of the Kingdom is likely to be one of the Nintendo Switch’s last truly significant games. Its successor is expected to be announced as early as later this year. The console reached 120 million units sold in February 2023, making it the third best-selling console of all time, after the Nintendo DS handheld and Sony’s PlayStation 2.
