Yes, but the Pokemon games are region free and share the same title ID, so as soon as the seed is available in one region (for instance, Japan would get the games first because time zones), every other region gets access to the seed. So if they have a preloaded copy, all they need to do is get the seed. So EU people were able to play it before their release date because of that. The games could have been on freeShop before release if someone uploaded the title keys after they bought the game and installed the preloaded copy, unless I'm misunderstanding how this all works.