Nintendo Wants Discord To Rat Out The Leaker Behind Massive Pokémon Leak

It seems as if Nintendo is aggressively going after its enemies these days. In the last few months, the company has gone after developers of popular Switch emulators and launched legal proceedings against the studio behind the smash hit Palworld. Now the company has set its sights on finding the party responsible for leaking stolen information about one of biggest cash cows, Pokémon.

The data breach, dubbed “Teraleak” by the Pokémon community, held a treasure trove of information. It included unreleased art assets, prototypes for games and features, documentation, source code and builds of older games. Although the most damaging information pertained to early details about the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A alongside the recently announced Pokémon Champions.


According to Polygon, Nintendo hit a Discord community with a subpoena in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The company is seeking to obtain the name, phone number, address and e-mail address of the user who goes by GameFreakOut in the FreakLeak Discord server. Nintendo will likely try and use this information to pursuit a lawsuit or some other legal action against whoever is behind the GameFreakOut user account.

It hasn’t gone well for those that have been in the crosshairs of Nintendo’s legal department. Take the case of Gary Bowser, who was found guilty of being involved in a business that sold modded Switch consoles. After spending time in prison, Bowser will have to pay the company to the tune of $14.5 million. It’s nearly impossible that he will be able to pay the entirety of this debt off now that he’s a convicted felon, potentially carrying this albatross around his neck for the rest of his life.

However, it isn’t guaranteed that Nintendo will gain any useful information from this subpoena. Whoever is running the account might have taken steps to conceal their identity, making it more difficult for the company to locate them.