Nintendo Is Trying To Track Down The Discord User Behind The Pokémon Massive Leak

Nintendo has requested a subpoena in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to Discord to obtain information regarding an account named GameFreakOUT. This account is linked to the massive data breach, referred to by the community as TeraLeak, that Pokémon developer Game Freak suffered last year.

According to the document found by Polygon, Nintendo states that the user had posted "infringing content" in the FreakLeak server, which infringes the company's "rights in the copyright-protected artwork, characters, and other materials related to the famous Pokémon franchise." 

With this DMCA subpoena, Nintendo has asked the chat platform to provide all possible information, "including name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), e-mail address(es), and IP address(es), or other information within your possession, custody or control, sufficient to identify the Discord user."

Besides the 2,606 personal data items of the company's current and former employees, tons of internal documents on game details and source code for previous Pokémon games were also leaked in the incident. The leaker also claimed to have art assets, documents, and even source code for Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which was announced last year and is coming to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 later this year, although they didn't publish them. 

Game Freak published a statement regarding the situation, admitting that the breach occurred in August and it resulted in staff personal information being leaked, without mentioning that confidential game-related data was also affected. The timing of the statement was a bit unusual. Although the statement is dated October 10, it didn't appear online until a day after the massive leaks, which started spreading widely online around October 12.