The investigation as to who managed to leak the Pokemon Sword and Shield guidebook continues. As reported upon last month, The Pokemon Company International took the initial steps to begin a lawsuit against a group of users who managed to leak images pertaining to Pokemon Sword and Shield, weeks prior to release. These images originated from an official guidebook, with the contents so closely guarded, that it released a week after the aforementioned games. When the images were shared online and went viral, The Pokemon Company and its representing law firm claimed that it caused "irreparable injury" to the company and brand. Previously, they were seeking a subpoena against both Discord and 4Chan, where the leaks supposedly originated. The motion has now been granted, and both sites/services will now be required to give any information that could lead to the identification of the three leakers.

Before the Court is Plaintiff The Pokémon Company International, Inc.’s (“TPCi”) Ex Parte Motion for Expedited Discovery. Having considered TPCi’s Motion and all other pleadings and papers on file in this matter, this Court hereby GRANTS the Motion. TPCi may serve subpoenas on Discord, 4chan, and DimensioNz#3307 before the Parties’ Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(f) conference.

Source

Tags: [COMPANY=/company/the-pokemon-company-international]The Pokémon Company International[/COMPANY]

 

[ken28]

At the same time this is kind of expected these days, how was this leaked, from stores?

From what I remember it was leaked from someone in the production

 

[Foxi4]

Lol at the “shitty game” comments. Best Pokémon game hands down and that’s the vast majority opinion. The small amount of people who say this game is “crap” are probably also in the flat earth movement, anything to go against the flow and be different and “woke”. If you spent time effort and money to put something together for fans of your work and tried to keep things under wraps to surprise your fans and some asshole leaked all your work NOT in the way you intended to do it you would sue as well. What’s bad about this game? The fact that they upgraded the mechanics to make it way easier to get competitive Pokémon? That they spent the bulk of the time making the battle animations smooth and vibrant? That they gave you minor changes that helped in the adventure like 2 nurseries with ample room to walk, access to your Pokémon boxes from anywhere? Raid battles you can do online or with friends locally? OMG they didn’t include the other 500 Pokémon who the hell manages 1000 creatures in one game? This “hurt” their sales dues to the fact that they did not intend for all this stuff to leak before people got a chance to actually play the game, for pictures to be leaked and for people to start saying what a shit game this was due to a few leaked images and a 400 mon dex is ridiculous. And yet here they are, the people who “hate” this game, on every thread expressing their disdain for it lol, I didn’t watch or click on a single leak before release and played the game for 30 minutes and was absolutely hooked. So to the 37 of you that absolutely hate the game, why aren’t you spending more time playing something else and less time replying to threads on the game you have no interest in?? Lol, this is hilarious, it’s like vegans spending all this time making things that look and feel like meat...out of vegetables lololol. If you don’t like or want to eat meat then eat vegetables and stfu, you don’t see meat eaters grinding meat and making it in the shape of broccoli and carrots. Epstein didn’t kill himself.

The game is objectively underwhelming, lots of aspects have been neglected or executed poorly - the game features sparsely animated low-poly models with low resolution textures, it suffers from *extreme* pop-in issues by design because Gamefreak doesn't know how to handle clipping or culling, it has significant performance issues with framerate anomalies all over the place, the weather system is ridiculous to such an extent that you can have a bike ride through four seasons of the year in less than a minute and some content is straight-up missing - I'm not even talking about the Pokedex, I'm talking about backgrounds that either don't match the environments or are replaced by a void. It's lazily made and inadequate, the studio clearly phoned it in because they couldn't stand up to the task of making a next gen Pokemon game *or* they didn't care since they knew that fans like you would defend it to the grave anyway, regardless of how poor the game is. Sword and Shield are a mile wide, but only an inch thick, especially compared to titles like BOTW or Mario Odyssey which actually show what the hardware can do. I could excuse all the cut content if the game was at least a technological marvel, but it is neither expansive nor particularly impressive. "Why aren't you just playing something else" is not a valid criticism, you should expect more from a full retail price title.

 

[dAVID_]

To be honest, I don't think this is going to go anywhere. A smart leaker would use a VPN with a throwaway account. Then again, there are dumb people

Not really. You can also be tracked using JavaScript.

 

[WeedZ]

What good is a subpoena against 4chan? Everything there gets purged after so much inactivity, and there are reply limits. If there were anything there, its gone now.

 

[Ericthegreat]

I feel like if an internal employee leaked the pictures, they would be behind a NDA agreement and would be much easier to track than requesting Reddit/4chan for clues

You would be surprised, this could very well be used to get an IP range that could further incriminate the internal leaker, and this way it's also a bigger scare tactic, I wouldn't be surprised if this all stops here.

 

[dAVID_]

What good is a subpoena against 4chan? Everything there gets purged after so much inactivity, and there are reply limits. If there were anything there, its gone now.

Maybe 4chan keeps a log of user data, who knows.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Maybe 4chan keeps a log of user data, who knows.

EDIT: From 4chan rules:
What personal information is collected?

4chan collects and stores user information for postings. Once a post is pruned or deleted, it is removed from our web server. We value the privacy of our users, and will not make private information such as IP addresses available to others, except to comply with court orders or to cooperate with law enforcement agencies when appropriate.

 

[Darksabre72]

As important as it is to protect an IP, I do wish they would have used that energy to have finished polishing their game. Sword and Sheild are fun but they have a lot of flaws.

i wish the same but most pokemon games don't usually have updates or dlc

 

[Joom]

They can "leak" anything if they already got the game delivered to them. Nintendo sent out the games... Its not like someone stole the cartridges and spread them on the internet.
In such a scenario it isn't even a "leak" since... again... Nintendo sent out the games. Which means the games had a release date BEFORE 14.11 BECAUSE Nintendo sent them out earlier.

Do you not know what an NDA is?

 

[fadx]

They can "leak" anything if they already got the game delivered to them. Nintendo sent out the games... Its not like someone stole the cartridges and spread them on the internet.
In such a scenario it isn't even a "leak" since... again... Nintendo sent out the games. Which means the games had a release date BEFORE 14.11 BECAUSE Nintendo sent them out earlier.

You as a normal consumer DO NOT need to know the "official releasedate". You DO NOT need to be a expert. If you purchase the game and the game gets delivered to you, you CAN share game info with other people on the internet. No matter when the so called "release date" is.

Nintendo loses the right of keeping game information secret at the moment where they ship the games out to you/to stores that are selling them earlier.

With how early the first leaks came out, no store should have had any copies. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to think that some cartridges were stolen somewhere in the manufacturing/distribution line.

EDIT: People are saying this is regarding the guidebook leaks. Why would there be 3 people of interest they're looking for and why would they not go after the guy that leaked far more than the guidebook leaker and the leaks were basically at the same time. Maybe I missed them explicitly saying they're going for guidebook leakers.

 

[Fugelmir]

They're putting more effort into pursuing the leakers than making the game.

 

[bobmcjr]

At this point, I'm not sure I care about the results of this suit too much. I'm just hoping this lawsuit gains some amount publicity among the general public so they can see what ludicrously litigious corporations Nintendo and Friends are.

"iRrEpArAbLe DaMaGeS"

 

[Joom]

My bad from my part but my point is a good game with a decent guide book could have turned the leak thing into a profit

That's a bad assumption. Look at the Sun and Moon leaks. What happened after everyone was banned? Everyone learned how to unban themselves, and continued to use a pirated copy of the games. I guarantee only a tiny percentage of people bought a brand new 3DS and the games after being banned.

 

[Mythical]

They can "leak" anything if they already got the game delivered to them. Nintendo sent out the games... Its not like someone stole the cartridges and spread them on the internet.
In such a scenario it isn't even a "leak" since... again... Nintendo sent out the games. Which means the games had a release date BEFORE 14.11 BECAUSE Nintendo sent them out earlier.

You as a normal consumer DO NOT need to know the "official releasedate". You DO NOT need to be a expert. If you purchase the game and the game gets delivered to you, you CAN share game info with other people on the internet. No matter when the so called "release date" is.

Nintendo loses the right of keeping game information secret at the moment where they ship the games out to you/to stores that are selling them earlier.

Yeah, buuuuuuttt that's not what happened here

 

[raxadian]

So is this gonna screw with people using Discord as a piracy hive? Not that they should be to begin with but we know they do.

They should use IRC for that, been working like charm for that since decades ago.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

They can "leak" anything if they already got the game delivered to them. Nintendo sent out the games... Its not like someone stole the cartridges and spread them on the internet.
In such a scenario it isn't even a "leak" since... again... Nintendo sent out the games. Which means the games had a release date BEFORE 14.11 BECAUSE Nintendo sent them out earlier.

You as a normal consumer DO NOT need to know the "official releasedate". You DO NOT need to be a expert. If you purchase the game and the game gets delivered to you, you CAN share game info with other people on the internet. No matter when the so called "release date" is.

Nintendo loses the right of keeping game information secret at the moment where they ship the games out to you/to stores that are selling them earlier.

Not if their copy of the game was not legitimately obtained, or if they had a review copy and an NDA... or if they broke street date by yoinking something out of the retail store they work in before it was supposed to be out, be it a guide or the game itself.

 

[chrisrlink]

they need to add "game leaker" otherwise they cant go after the game leaker too Subpoenas need to be very specific on who/what the courts can request btw 4ch iirc isn't subpena friendly just like TPB annon users (though i imagine after this they'll stop their anti vpn policy to protect it's user base

 

[the_randomizer]

Pretty tough coming from a company who reuses assets from the 3DS iterations

 

[EJW]

Pretty tough coming from a company who reuses assets from the 3DS iterations

So?

 

[Jayro]

I don't think the leakers should be sued. They should countersue if anything. This whole thing is fucking absurd. Some people get things before the official release. Now if they had STOLEN the guide, I could understand having grounds to sue them. But I don't think that's the case here. Nintendo is just sue-happy.

 

[the_randomizer]

So?

Shows how lazy developers can be. I hardly see how the leaks were "harmful" to their reputation. Lots of pokemon cut, art style is meh at best, especially after claims that the models required "lots of work" to be put in the game.

Funny how they can allocate resources and funding for litigation, but can't be bothered to polish and fix issues in a game.