Nintendo is trying to force Discord to give up the identity of the person behind last year’s massive Pokémon leak

Six months after the massive “teraleak” that unleashed literally decades of Pokémon art, design documents, and other development material upon the world, Nintendo is trying to force Discord to give up the identity of the person behind it.

As reported by Polygon, the company has petitioned a California court to issue a DMCA subpoena ordering Discord to provide the name, address, telephone number, email address, IP address, “or other information within your possession, custody or control, sufficient to identify the Discord user or former Discord user ‘GameFreakOUT’.”

That’s the Discord handle of the person who allegedly hacked Pokémon developer Game Freak and then posted a treasure trove of previously unreleased material ranging from work-in-progress sprites to concept art from the original 1997 anime, design bible lore, and even minutes from a Pokémon Company meeting.

This is the first step in a process that could have a very unhappy ending for GameFreakOUT. If the subpoena is issued and Discord complies with it, both of which seem likely (I’m not a lawyer, but I know how these things go), Nintendo will then be able to bring its lawyers to bear on the currently-anonymous leaker. That’s not a guaranteed outcome, but the company is notorious for being highly protective of its property, and viciously litigious with those who step out of line.

This is where we bring up the case of Gary Bowser, who was sentenced to three years in federal prison (he ultimately served one) and a $4.5 million fine for selling modchips and jailbreaking software for various Nintendo consoles. That’s pretty ruthless, but not enough for Nintendo, which came after him for an additional $10 million in a separate civil suit. It’s an amount he can literally never pay off, but Nintendo’s squeezing him for it anyway.

If legal action is pursued, the “teraleaker” may not face consequences quite that severe: They didn’t sell anything, after all. But as Polygon reported in 2021, an earlier Pokémon leak did result in a lawsuit, filed in that case by the Pokémon Company, which left the two leakers involved owing the company $150,000 each. Given the much larger scale of the “teraleak,” I’ll be very surprised indeed if Nintendo doesn’t come down hard on whoever pulled it off.