Nintendo Doubling-Down On Security Following Latest Video Game Leaker Drama

Nintendo is working to beef up its security and IT training following recent reports of how major announcements were scrapped from YouTube’s backend ahead of major Directs. The acknowledgement of efforts to curb internal information from being exposed by outside actors comes as the video game industry leaker scene gets swallowed up in weird drama.

During its annual shareholder meeting Thursday, Nintendo was asked about recent reports by 404 Media and others on data security issues at Google, according to remarks transcribed by Twitter user NStyles and translated by VGC. The reported incidents included mentions of an employee gaining access to the Yoshi’s Crafted World trailer from YouTube’s backend before the game was officially announced for Switch. A separate report by Insider Gaming noted other incidents, and corroborated that lots of big gaming leaks come from data uploaded early to YouTube’s backend and accessed by contractors.

According to VGC, Nintendo acknowledged the reports and said the company was using outside security firms, new security system measures, and employee training to address the issues around leaks. It doesn’t sound like the Switch manufacturer went into specifics about how it’s plugging leaks, but fans have been speculating about what steps Nintendo is taking ever since the latest implosion of an online gaming leaker last week.

Online user Pyoro was one of the last remaining leakers who seemed to at least occasionally have solid sources of information, but they came up surprisingly dry ahead of the big June Nintendo Direct where the company surprise-revealed a ton of first-party projects, including a brand-new Mario & Luigi RPG and a top-down The Legend of Zelda starring, for the first time, a playable princess. The news dump contradicted Pyoro’s vague expectation-setting ahead of time, and seemed to expose them as out of information.

As Bloomberg reported at the time, fans quickly realized that unlike previous Nintendo Directs, many of the games announced didn’t immediately have store pages go live on the eShop, suggesting that perhaps backend data from those listings was part of how Pyoro had been getting their information. The leaker then took the incredibly odd step of leaking their own source to Bloomberg, stating that source was a Nintendo employee in Japan and that the “backend theory is a reasonable guess” about where that person got their information from. Even more surprisingly, Pyoro later locked their account after stating they hadn’t expected their comments to a reporter to be included in a news article.

Store pages for the games announced last week have only recently started going live, including the one revealing the unexpected $60 premium for Donkey Kong Country Returns HD. It’s possible that this is one of the steps Nintendo is taking to crack down on leaks, alongside potentially shifting how it engages with video hosting services like YouTube. We’ll have a better sense of how those strategies are working when and if we don’t hear about future upcoming announcements, including for likely Switch 2 launch games.

In the meantime, the video game leaking scene is still in shambles. Midori, another mysterious leaker, was recently revealed to be well known male Persona fan posing as a mysterious Japanese woman. Until a new hero rises up, super fans will just have to wait for the eventual press releases like everyone else.