Nintendo take action against Pokemon Sword and Shield leaks
Nintendo have taken strong action to combat comprehensive leaks for Pokemon Sword and Shield, after many key details of the game’s story were revealed just days before release.
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A batch of leaks, including everything from new Pokemon to how the Sword and Shield story will play out, surfaced on November 2. These leaks remained online for a good couple of days but the game’s developers have now moved to have many of them taken down.
Such strong measures taken to hide what many believed to be potentially leaked information would suggest that there was some truth to them. The steps taken should hardly comes as a surprise, given the game is just days away from releasing.
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Lista completa de todos los nuevos Pokémon y formas de la 8va generación de Pokémon.
Complete list of every new Pokémon and form from the 8th generation of Pokémon. pic.twitter.com/ZWvX4ugsAQ
— Centro Pokémon LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) November 4, 2019
Twitter leak images removed
Several Twitter accounts had their posted images removed, being replaced with the message: “Media not displayed. This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder.”
One of the more prominent leakers, Centro Pokemon Leaks, were among the accounts to be hit. They have tried to work around this, however, by retweeting smaller accounts which share the images after they provide clues about where to find them.
They have also used Imgur as an alternative place to upload images, but such leaks have even been removed there.
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Centro also shared further details of the takedown notice with the copyright owner being listed as Nintendo of America Inc. “Looks like Nintendo has deleted almost all images posted by this account, RIP.”
Looks like Nintendo has deleted almost all images posted by this account
RIP pic.twitter.com/aotwhTiQyS
— Centro Pokémon LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) November 5, 2019
Copyright strikes for YouTubers
Twitter wasn’t the only social platform hit, though. One Pokemon YouTuber also received a copyright strike for covering the leaks.
RuffledRowlit was one of many to cover them, but he was the only to receive a strike. A copyright strike is bad news for YouTubers because if they were to get three of them then their channel may be deleted.
This prompted other Pokemon YouTubers, such as Austin John Plays and Verlisify, to remove their videos in order to prevent the same from happening to them. Austin John Plays shared the following: “Based on everything going on I’ve decided to delete all of those videos,” referring to his Pokemon Sword and Shield leak videos.
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The leaks have well and truly made their way around the Pokemon community already, although Nintendo are still trying to contain them. Hopefully those who wanted to avoid them did just that.
It will be interesting to see if more Pokemon Sword and Shield leaks surface between now and November 15, when the game releases.
