What Do These Pokemon Leaks Mean For Nintendo?

As you may have seen over the weekend, there was a massive leak at Game Freak, resulting in information on cancelled or in development Pokemon games, background lore that was rejected or at least never considered for public consumption, scant details on the upcoming Switch 2, and lots of employee data all being released. The latter of which being the only thing Game Freak has acknowledged as being part of the leak.

To put this in perspective, the reported leak is 1TB in size, smaller than the 1.67TB leak that hit Insomniac back in December, and larger than the 2TB estimate for the Nintendo ‘gigaleak’ of 2018/2020 (though some estimates put the gigaleak as notably smaller than 1TB). With that perspective out of the way, we can indulge in sensationalism – this leak is absolutely huge.

Size is not always a good judge of how big something is. There is that old adage about it being how you use it, after all. Insomniac’s leak was no doubt huge – it revealed every game the company had planned for the next decade, details on the cancelled Spider-Man multiplayer game, and came with tons of Wolverine footage. But that’s part of the issue with using size alone – lots of Wolverine footage takes up lots of terabytes, but is it really that ‘big’?

Pokemon Leaking Is A Big Deal Because Pokemon Is A Big Deal

Most of what we’ve seen so far from these alleged leaks comes in the form of design documents, or transcripts of discussions around design documents, taking place both before and after any given game has launched, with varying receptions each time despite Pokemon’s somewhat consistent sales figures. The Pokemon designs themselves are simple sketches, not in-progress triple-A gameplay footage like Wolverine.

This means there is more in this leak, despite the leak itself being smaller in size. Then there’s the relative cultural cache to consider. There aren’t many gaming franchises that can blow Marvel out of the water without a second thought, but Pokemon is among that elite company. Part of the reason this leak is ‘big’ is because Nintendo is often secretive, especially around Pokemon, and has taken care to sand off any edges in its public presentation. Seeing Pokemon warts and all, including ideas that were destined never to see the light of day, is ‘bigger’ in part because of this constant secrecy.

Of course, that also means it is tempting to read too much into things. Plenty of studios have discussions that would likely seem bizarre if transcribed and shared without context. Some parts of this leak do seem as if no amount of context would help, but we have no idea how much (if at all) these lore entries informed any of the design choices or narratives of Pokemon. Despite so much information, we may have learned very little about how Pokemon works.

Many Of The Pokemon Stories Were Never Meant To Be Read

There is a scene in The Day of the Jackal when a detective tells his subordinate to keep a visit to a person of interest off the record. This visit is to the wife of the convict aiding with the investigation, and very little is learned here, but it raises the convict’s morale to get him onside. The detective wants it kept off the record so the Jackal, the man they are hunting, has no way of finding out. The subordinate, a typical pencil pusher, puts it on the record anyway. Later, when he is tasked with guarding said person of interest, he is killed by the Jackal who found him via his own report.

The point of that aside is that the police report served no purpose, but was kept because that’s how you do things by the book. In the end, its narrative purpose is revealed – it is how the pencil pusher dies. It feels similar to some of these Nintendo stories. A paper trail of spitballed ideas with no chance of ever becoming official was kept because that is how you do things by the book. These ideas had no purpose. And then, they were leaked, and thus found one.

So what does all this mean, in the broader scheme of things? We know, from the recent heavier crackdown on ROM hacks and emulation, including the life-ruining sentence and fine for Gary Bowser (a punishment too often overlooked because of his ironic name), that Nintendo has a litigious fist of pure steel. When, and how, does it strike back for something of this magnitude?

What Does The 2020 Gigaleak Teach Us About Pokemon’s Leak?

The ‘Gigaleak’ of 2020 actually occurred in 2018, but didn’t really find prominence until two years later. It contained, among other things, unused sprites for various characters (including a earlier design of Yoshi), prototypes for Yoshi’s Island, Mario 64, and an unreleased ‘Zelda 64’ version of Ocarina of Time, source codes for decade old games, transcripts on Star Fox’s ultimate cancellation involving office politics, and a Pokemon MMO, the latter of which also allegedly appears in the most recent leaks.

These leaks were similarly huge, but were regarded as curiosities. That Yoshi was once a little slimmer, or that Ocarina of Time (generally regarded as one of the best Zelda games) was initially going to be a bit different doesn’t matter very much. The Pokemon leaks, which reveal products still in development or information that may change how some people view specific Pokemon in future, feels less like a ‘oh that’s neat’ sort of leak. The early Pokemon designs are the only thing in that category.

So we might use the ‘gigaleak’ as a baseline this time around. The last set of leaks were traced to Zammis Clark in 2019, before the vast majority of the leaks had even been publicly distributed. Clark pled guilty to hacking Microsoft and Nintendo’s servers, and was sentenced to 15 months in jail. However, the judge elected to make this a suspended sentence rather than a custodial one. In response, Nintendo said it had tightened its security, and while the nature and method of this breach is still largely unknown, it would appear this was not enough.

Game Freak reacted quickly to confirm and apologise for the data breach, but stopped short of mentioning any details relating to Pokemon’s lore, development schedule, or potential roadmaps. It remains to be seen if any further official comment will be made, and what legal action will be brought. One thing is for certain though – the hyperspecific focus on the oddities of Pokemon means this leak will be remembered as one of the biggest breaches in video game history.