Nintendo Ratchets Up Hunt For Mysterious User Behind Massive Pokémon Leak
All hell broke loose in the Pokémon community last October when leaked internal documents, game builds, and more from developer Game Freak appeared online. Fans got a front row seat to everything from upcoming project codenames to a rapidly meme-ified Typhlosion backstory. It may have been the biggest leak in Pokémon history and Nintendo is now demanding Discord turn over the personal account info for the user who dumped what has since been dubbed the 'Teraleak' on one of its servers.
Nintendo filed a request for a subpoena on April 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Polygon reports. The Mario maker wants 'to obtain the identity of the Discord user 'GameFreakOUT,' who posted infringing content,' wrote one of its lawyers. The filing included a screenshot of the Discord server in question and user GameFreakOUT sharing the file link with the word 'enjoy.'
Game Freak released a statement on October 10 that it had been hacked and over 2,000 pieces of employee data had been subjected to 'unauthorized access by a third party.' What it didn't mention was that a ton of confidential data related to its work on the Pokémon franchise was also seemingly accessed during the breach. That wasn't revealed until days later when unused Pokémon designs, lore entries, idle developer musings, and more began spreading on Discord, 4chan, Reddit, and eventually the rest of social media.
One of the biggest discoveries from the leaks was references to Gen 10 Pokémon games for Switch 2 that were reportedly codenamed 'Gaia.' But the leak also purportedly contained very sensitive data that wasn't released by GameFreakOUT, like the alleged source code for the upcoming 2025 Switch 1 game PokémonLegends: Z-A. Nintendo's new subpoena suggests it may not yet have actually tracked down the Discord user in question, or is hoping to learn the identities of anyone else that was working with them.
This isn't the first time the Mario maker has come knocking on the gaming hangout platform's door. Nintendo previously subpoenaed Discord for the identity of a user involved with sharing scans of an at-the-time unreleased The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom artbook. It's also been aggressive in getting the company to remove channels related to Switch emulators or otherwise involved in what it believes to be efforts to infringe on its copyrights. The 'Teraleak' is clearly no exception, even if Nintendo has been relatively quiet about those efforts up until now.
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