Keep an eye out if you’re on social media and don’t want to be spoiled by The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Link’s new adventure was made available to a few players earlier, which of course led to fat leaks in image and video form. You can even find the entire game online.
Leaks are pretty much every developer’s nightmare. Nintendo, in particular, attaches great importance to only releasing information at times of its own choosing. Accordingly, the Japanese company is probably going crazy at the moment, because The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been leaked. And on a frightening scale.
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It kicked off with an image of an opened physical copy of the game landing on a fan two weeks early. This quickly developed into a wildfire, because some other gamers apparently also got their version. There are tons of pictures and videos from the open-world blockbuster on the web, and in the meantime some people have even streamed Tears of the Kingdom on Twitch and Discord.
Nintendo is cracking down and a lot of content has already been removed accordingly. However, we would like to issue a clear spoiler warning at this point. It is best to mute relevant hashtags or avoid social media completely until the release on May 12, 2023.
What is particularly hearty about the current situation is that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom can be found on some ROM pages. That’s right, a fully playable and fully fledged version of the title. Ouch.
Of course, the interesting question is how the copies were able to circulate so early. It’s still two weeks until the release, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that hundreds of thousands of physical versions are available from various retailers. Normally, of course, they stick to the specified dates. Perhaps an employee had fingers that were too long?
This debacle isn’t even the first leak related to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. A few weeks ago, the artbook found its way onto the internet, prompting Nintendo to take direct legal action against the leaker. And let’s face it, heads will definitely roll for the full game’s early release, too.