Gaming | May 16, 2023
The leak of ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’ is giving Nintendo quite a few headaches. Although it hasn’t diminished the immense interest in the game, which is arriving this very week, part of its content is being leaked more than it should, with users who seem to have had access to the game ahead of time. Nintendo is understandably unhappy, with even Reggie Fils-Aimé having spoken out about it, and is taking measures to prevent the leaked content from being seen ahead of time.
The latest victim of Nintendo’s harsh measures is a streamer and content creator, Alanah Pearce, who is also a writer at Sony Santa Monica. Pearce was reacting live to content from the upcoming Zelda game, but it wasn’t due to a leak, but to the first impressions published by a media outlet, SkillUp. It was approved content by Nintendo, as the outlet had legally accessed that part of the game at an event in Australia.
Pearce was left to react on social media to Nintendo’s mistake: she wrote on Twitter “Lol, my Twitch channel got suspended mid-stream because I was reacting to SkillUp’s Zelda impressions video”, and recorded videos explaining how her Twitch channel had been demonetized due to Nintendo’s complaint (the platform informed her that the complaint was not related to the media outlet, but to the company responsible for Link’s adventures).
finally, Pearce was able to recover her account in just one hour, when Nintendo possibly reacted to the false complaint and withdrew it. The incident remained anecdotal, but it is good proof of how much Nintendo is firmly betting on this game: it is a winning bet, and given the enthusiastic first impressions it is collecting, but being one of the top candidates for game of the year, all precautions from the company are necessary.
