After being accused of causing "irreparable injury" to The Pokemon Company, by leaking pictures of a Pokemon Sword and Shield strategy guide prior to release, two defendants have been ordered to pay for damages and legal fee costs to TPCI, following a recently settled lawsuit. Bryan Cruz and David Maisonave, the two defendants, were responsible for taking pictures of a Pokemon guidebook, which featured images of at-the-time unrevealed Pokemon featured in the upcoming Pokemon Sword and Shield games. One of them had worked at a company responsible for creating the strategy guide, and The Pokemon Company International team's lawyers accused the employee of stealing trade secrets and distributing them over Discord.

The incident occurred in late 2019, with the lawsuit initially filed in November of that same year. Now, the case has been settled, and according to the presiding judge, the verdict can not be appealed; both Maisonave and Cruz will have to pay $150,000 to The Pokemon Company International.

Source

 

[Plazorn]

Why would you even need a strategy guide for sword and shield,
They are such ridiculously easy anyway

 

[codezer0]

Why would you even need a strategy guide for sword and shield,
They are such ridiculously easy anyway

well, considering some idiot at game freak decided to hide accessibility options behind a miss-able NPC in the early game, it would be nice to know about such things from the get-go.
Also, not sure about the region of galar, but for earlier generations, the maps in such guides were often indispensable for finding items or planning for trainer battles along the route. And some of the better official guides also listed encounter rates and expected level ranges of the wild critters or trainer teams.

 

[Deleted member 331788]

Nintendo lawsuits are just stupid ...what about the upside? ...like how many copies were sold from them by uploading the images?? Zero in Nintendo eyes!!!

 

[FAST6191]

Also, what harm are they claiming leaking portions of a strategy guide can cause? This is dystopian as fuck

It stands to reason for me.

At the time the information revealed saw the games be noted as not having certain features and things the fans expected, this in turn was received quite negatively. If indeed the first days of sales are responsible for the bigger chunk of the income then having proof of things not being there would in turn potentially detract from sales, and incomplete leaks (lie of omission being a related concept for the fun that can be had there) could be similarly deleterious. See also film was not given a press screening and other similar things in the entertainment world in an attempt to stall critics from seeing it and still gain something before they see it and say don't bother. Or indeed this might be closer to leaked scripts for a film, while not quite a shiny DVD of the finished film it can still cause traumas.

Couple that with it being enhanced by the leakers being in effect contractors of Nintendo then any internal or privileged access given in the future will be able to have this pointed at, just like all the FUD Nintendo sows about emulation and other such things.