Nintendo sends a cease and desist to insider that has leaked pretty much every E3 2019 announcement

[7threst]

What a brave and honourable soul. Sticking it to the corporations and looking out for the little guy. He's like a modern day Robin Hood or something.

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My god. This tweet really reads like a "don't forget to hit the subscribe button!"-thing. Which is a little bit tragic considering the seriousness of a C&D letter. It's like the leaker has no clue that this ride is over while the rest of the world is watching.

 

[Deleted member 5535]

It's much easier to be mad over some vague anti-capitalist-but-still-inherently-capitalist notions than it is to actually champion worker's rights and opinions.

See the legions of Youtubers who blatantly break fair use rules (whilst using the lack of legal precedent to get off scott-free) before going on to complain that developers aren't getting royalties for their work. Or the people in this thread saying that they think leaks are pro-worker whilst basically implying that marketing teams are sub-human.

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You made a great point. If you work in a game company and you're not a dev, you don't count, even though you're involved as well. It's so disgusting how it's treated like that.

Not that devs aren't treated badly many times.

 

[HeroR]

I really don't understand the point of leaking something that's just hours away from happening. Like, if they leak that some game is in production but real info is months away, that's cool because now you know, but leaking something that has been planned to be revealed with fanfare just in a couple of days?

I see it this way, if someone leaks that a certain film is in production by x company, that increases hype so it's cool. If someone leaks the entire plot and ending just as you're queueing to enter the cinema, that's spoiling and just ruins the whole thing. I think it is the same thing here.

Anyway, I prefer to find out about things with trailers and presentations prepared to be exciting, not wish Twitter bullet lists, but that's me.

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That is what I don't get either. You're going to get the information in a day or two. Heck, a few hours in some cases. Why do you need to know ahead of time. It isn't like you're getting this information six months in advance. That and hearing about a concept isn't the same as actually seeing the produced. Using Mario and Rabbids again, this game was lampooned to hell and back for its premises to the point that the developers lost heart. And the game was a passion and dream project.

 

[Dust]

I wonder what kind of source has access to everything from pretty much all publishers.
Either someone from E3 jury or actually hacking servers, as I doubt retail worker would provide so much.

 

[Notaskwid]

We are talking about some random person posting a one line twitter message literal hours before the official announcement. Nobody is being kept "in check ". This is borderline delusional, you are not breaking up big bad companies in a rage against the machine sort of way.

I mean, I know you have a raging hate boner for Nintendo, but this is utter self-parody even for you.

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At that point I was not even talking about this leaker in particular, but sure.
If you can't see how ridiculous it is a multi billion company to threaten a individual for revealing a list of games they will show in a couple of hours, all is said.

 

[Giga Man]

What leaked?

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Some lawyer's private information.

 

[Vampirolol]

At that point I was not even talking about this leaker in particular, but sure.
If you can't see how ridiculous it is a multi billion company to threaten a individual for revealing a list of games they will show in a couple of hours, all is said.

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I can't see anything ridiculous about it.

 

[Ms.Galaxy]

Honestly, if you're gonna leak something, protect your sources and make sure it's vague enough to be pass off as rumors and speculation. Alternatively be like me and just enjoy the fact you know something that most people won't know until later and watch as they go mad with speculation and rumors during E3 week. Mwahaha!!

 

[HeroR]

You made a great point. If you work in a game company and you're not a dev, you don't count, even though you're involved as well. It's so disgusting how it's treated like that.

Not that devs aren't treated badly many times.

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To be fair, the marketing team in any industry is treated like the devil. Same goes if you work in communications.

 

[JustJavi]

It was not a fun time.

Thankfully I now have a good relationship with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company so it worked out in the end.

In hindsight, I shouldn't have posted what I posted. That was a terrible leak.

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I remember reading about it on gaf when it happend years ago, but can't remember what it was. I'm glad you guys get along now though.

 

[Mediking]

Honestly, if you're gonna leak something, protect your sources and make sure it's vague enough to be pass off as rumors and speculation. Alternatively be like me and just enjoy the fact you know something that most people won't know until later and watch as they go mad with speculation and rumors during E3 week. Mwahaha!!

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That moment when someone from Nintendo of America makes a post

 

[Glio]

To be fair, the marketing team in any industry is treated like the devil. Same goes if you work in communications.

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But it's like lawyer jokes.

They are a fundamental part of the company, even if you do not like it.

 

[HeroR]

At that point I was not even talking about this leaker in particular, but sure.
If you can't see how ridiculous it is a multi billion company to threaten a individual for revealing a list of games they will show in a couple of hours, all is said.

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Well why do this information needs to be leak if it's going to be shown in a couple hours regardless? Why can't people wait?

And why are we ignoring developers who actually said that leaks completely suck for them?

 

[Deleted member 40102]

Good. The two job/hoppy I hate the most is paparazzi and leakers. They try to make money/fame out of someone else expense.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

At that point I was not even talking about this leaker in particular, but sure.
If you can't see how ridiculous it is a multi billion company to threaten a individual for revealing a list of games they will show in a couple of hours, all is said.

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It goes both ways. Why does this random Twitter person think they have the right to release significant information on thousands of peoples work, for their own few minutes of fame, when they know for a fact it'll all be public information in a few days anyway?

 

[shinken]

They're called whistleblower and they're supposed to be protected under law, although even that has been under attack lately.

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Lmao, you are not a whistleblower if you are leaking videogame announcements.

 

[Septimius]

At that point I was not even talking about this leaker in particular, but sure.
If you can't see how ridiculous it is a multi billion company to threaten a individual for revealing a list of games they will show in a couple of hours, all is said.

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This isn't how law works. If you have something you want to publish you made, you have a right to copy it. You have a right to first publish. It's the law, and it's there for a very good reason. Your interpretation that this is somehow petty is silly. Someone's breaking the law.

 

[Serebii]

I remember reading about it on gaf when it happend years ago, but can't remember what it was. I'm glad you guys get along now though.

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Basically, in 2010 a spanish site released images of each Pokémon introduced in Black & White. I reposted these images and, despite not being the leak, and I got hit by it. It was quite unfortunate but is now why I'm careful with leaks, especially ones involving images.

Their lawyer was ridiculously heavy handed, demanding I never post pictures for any future Pokémon games, but that was ridiculous and not legal so nuts to that. Took me two weeks on the phone to NOA to try and get it sorted.

 

[Peterc]

The hype is real

 

[Plum]

I already clarified this point via edit (I'll concide the poor wording on mind end) before this post was made I was more so speaking from a sociological perspective of how faucets of society (IE industries) evolve to new things over time.

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The thing is only one those things represented a fundamental change in how things worked. Being better about fighting workplace harassment/assault or paying lip-service to LGBT issues don't make a relatively massive dent at the end of the day (even with cases like Weinstein it's still 'only' one person being replaced) whereas the removal of the very notion of a carefully-planned marketing strategy would do major damage, enough that the very idea of doing so is inherently implausible. And what would it be for? Some vague notion of 'consumer freedom' or something? You say you're ignoring the moral side here but that's a hell of a lot less important than racism, sexism, and homophobia.

If you are going to make comparisons then desegregation, the rise of immigration, and the proliferation of women into the workforce are definitely significant changes in how things are run. However I'd argue that they were only accepted in the end because they offered businesses a greater opportunity for more worker exploitation as more workers = an employer's market = less pay and rights. It's why so much focus is being put onto getting women and minorities into more highly-educated roles, because they haven't had the decades of privilege that White Men have had and are therefore more prone to working jobs with low pay and poor conditions.

 

[HeroR]

But it's like lawyer jokes.

They are a fundamental part of the company, even if you do not like it.

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Doesn't matter. Creators and directors are good and noble and must be protected. Everyone else, fucked them and their cooperate overlords. Like people in marketing have lives and dreams, they're not even people.

 

[Wetalo]

I don't believe anything this Twitter account says. Even this. Seems like an excuse not to get anything wrong.

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They accurately spoiled the whole Bethesda conference the day before it happened but ok keep not believing her...

 

[Septimius]

Basically, in 2010 a spanish site released images of each Pokémon introduced in Black & White. I reposted these images and, despite not being the leak, and I got hit by it. It was quite unfortunate but is now why I'm careful with leaks, especially ones involving images.

Their lawyer was ridiculously heavy handed, demanding I never post pictures for any future Pokémon games, but that was ridiculous and not legal so nuts to that. Took me two weeks on the phone to NOA to try and get it sorted.

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Holy shit, that's insane. Glad you got that other part sorted. That's just silly.

 

[HeroR]

Lmao, you are not a whistleblower if you are leaking videogame announcements.

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That wasn't what I was posting about. I was saying if someone is leaking secrets that were illegal in a company, then it's whistleblowing.

 

[Serebii]

Holy shit, that's insane. Glad you got that other part sorted. That's just silly.

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I don't fault Nintendo.

From what I could gather, Nintendo's legal department were "Get them to remove those specific images", which is fair. They were internal leaks that shouldn't have been posted or shared but their lawyer (a different one to this one....it was 9 years ago) just demanded all images go. My site was without any images for Black & White for 2 weeks.

I honestly thought it was the end of my site at that point.

Since then, I've learned what it means to leak, the wider reprecussions and so forth.

 

[Notaskwid]

Well why do this information needs to be leak if it's going to be shown in a couple hours regardless? Why can't people wait?

And why are we ignoring developers who actually said that leaks completely suck for them?

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Im not even said it should.
We also had Devs saying that NDAs are mandated by publishers and they'd prefer be able to be more transparent. Isn't the reason why it 'sucks' because publishers want to keep the lid shut? They are the ones who stand to earn more from secrecy.

 

[Efejota]

I saw this person having "Nintendo leaker" as his profile description. It was to be expected.

 

[HeroR]

I don't fault Nintendo.

From what I could gather, Nintendo's legal department were "Get them to remove those specific images", which is fair. They were internal leaks that shouldn't have been posted or shared but their lawyer (a different one to this one....it was 9 years ago) just demanded all images go. My site was without any images for Black & White for 2 weeks.

I honestly thought it was the end of my site at that point.

Since then, I've learned what it means to leak, the wider reprecussions and so forth.

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That is going a bridge too far for me, but I guess it had the effect of 'scaring you straight'. Still, dick move.

 

[Serebii]

That is going a bridge too far for me, but I guess it had the effect of 'scaring you straight'. Still, dick move.

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Like I said. It wasn't Nintendo's doing. It was just their dumbass lawyer

 

[Plum]

Doesn't matter. Creators and directors are good and noble and must be protected. Everyone else, fucked them and their cooperate overlords. Like people in marketing have lives and dreams, they're not even people.

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It is funny how that dichotomy works. You can see it elsewhere, with armchair developers being (rightfully) given shit whilst armchair marketers or armchair business strategists get no flack at all.

Frankly it's the whole STEM Superiority philosophy at work. The philosophy that anyone who isn't doing something 'technical' is doing a job that could be done by anyone and is, therefore, inherently worthless.

 

[MoogleMaestro]

So I hear this "not so legal means" phrase being thrown around. Are we talking NDA breaking legal means? Or straight up illicit hacking or theft means?

Either way, I feel like this E3 has been a relatively rough one in terms of well guarded secrets, so something is definitely a bit fishy regarding some this leaking network.

 

[AlanOC91]

I don't fault Nintendo.

From what I could gather, Nintendo's legal department were "Get them to remove those specific images", which is fair. They were internal leaks that shouldn't have been posted or shared but their lawyer (a different one to this one....it was 9 years ago) just demanded all images go. My site was without any images for Black & White for 2 weeks.

I honestly thought it was the end of my site at that point.

Since then, I've learned what it means to leak, the wider reprecussions and so forth.

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What a terrifying story. I'm always petrified that one day Konami/NAS will turn around and ask me to shut down the site. Nightmareish thought.

 

[Serebii]

What a terrifying story. I'm always petrified that one day Konami/NAS will turn around and ask me to shut down the site. Nightmareish thought.

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Yeah it's always a fear. That's why I'm glad I've got a good relationship with TPCi now. They even invited me to their HQ to play an exclusive part of Let's Go last year :)

 

[HeroR]

[QUOT

Im not even said it should.
We also had Devs saying that NDAs are mandated by publishers and they'd prefer be able to be more transparent. Isn't the reason why it 'sucks' because publishers want to keep the lid shut? They are the ones who stand to earn more from secrecy.

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We had actual developers say it sucks because not only does it ruined the surprised they were trying to build, but it outright put the game in a bad light without proper context. The developers of Mario and Rabbids had their game leaked and they talked about how demoralizing it was to see their game ripped apart before they could proper present it and made them wonder if they made a mistake even making the game.

Sakurai talked about in 2018 how happy he was that Smash Ultimate 'Everyone is Here', didn't leaked since it would have completely ruined the surprised of everyone being back and take away from the main draw of the new Smash game.

It isn't just publishers hurt by early leaks, developers are hurt too. So I don't see why gamers can't wait, especially when they will get information in 48 hours or less.

 

[Aprikurt]

Always seems like such high risk for such little reward.

Your entire career and credibility within the industry gone at the post of a Tweet... all for a brief internet high. Goodness.

 

[Chewie]

I don't wish her anything bad/horrible, but I'm honestly becoming more tired with this leaker culture that has been slowly becoming more and more insufferable.

 

[Alastor3]

Good.

 

[Glio]

That is going a bridge too far for me, but I guess it had the effect of 'scaring you straight'. Still, dick move.

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I guess it will be like any negotiation, you ask for something completely unreasonable and then go down.

 

[Deleted member 5159]

I wonder why most people don't talk more about the fact that Nate Drake, BronsonLee, and others, are implying that Sabi got all those infos by illegal manners. I think it's huge.

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yup.

God, she's dumb.

We've been here before with SuperMetalDave back in the day- a random no-name stumbling into a treasure trove of information and being incredibly indiscrete about it, leading to serious real-world consequences. In that case, the Nintendo employee who was his source ended up fired- I don't know who Sabi's source is, but they're going to catch a whole gang of shit over this, and probably will face legal consequences if they're rooted out. Depending on the situation, Sabi absolutely could be on the hook here herself- although she hasn't signed an NDA herself, there's a reasonable chance that she knows full well that her source did, putting her right in the crosshairs of a misappropriation of trade secrets case.

I'm not morally opposed to people sharing stuff they've heard, but throwing sources under the bus through a desperate attempt for internet cred always sits really poorly with me, and advertising leaks in advance in an attempt to build up a following is just pathetic. People toss this sort of stuff on 4chan for a reason- go public with it, and you hang yourself and your source out to dry.

Honestly, what an idiot.

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she's got no inside source, she went from being a marcus sellar caliber "leaker" to knowing the full e3 beat by beat. there was hacking involved, if not by her, by someone close

 

[7threst]

What kind of annoys me is the way leakers present themselves as all knowing wizards sharing their worldy knowledge with us simple peasants. But slip up, and all that stupid internet fame is insta-gone.

We had actual developers say it sucks because not only does it ruined the surprised they were trying to build, but it outright put the game in a bad light without proper context. The developers of Mario and Rabbids had their game leaked and they talked about how demoralizing it was to see their game ripped apart before they could proper present it and made them wonder if they made a mistake even making the game.

Sakurai talked about in 2018 how happy he was that Smash Ultimate 'Everyone is Here', didn't leaked since it would have completely ruined the surprised of everyone being back and take away from the main draw of the new Smash game.

It isn't just publishers hurt by early leaks, developers are hurt too. So I don't see why gamers can't wait, especially when they will get information in 48 hours or less.

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The Mario and Rabbids thing sounds horrible, especially when looking back at this game being great.

 

[Herne]

Pretty petty of Nintendo

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How so? If someone is leaking their announcements and content before they're able to reveal them I don't see why it would be petty to want them to stop.

 

[Deleted member 40102]

At that point I was not even talking about this leaker in particular, but sure.
If you can't see how ridiculous it is a multi billion company to threaten a individual for revealing a list of games they will show in a couple of hours, all is said.

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Nothing ridicules about it. This multi billionaire company is a work of people and they get to decide when and where they wanna announce their work not some random person on the internet who put 0 effort in the work to get all the credit and fame for someone else work.

If you can't see how ridicules someone taking credit for others hard work, all is said.

 

[timrtabor123]

The thing is only one those things represented a fundamental change in how things worked. Being better about fighting workplace harassment/assault or paying lip-service to LGBT issues don't make a relatively massive dent at the end of the day (even with cases like Weinstein it's still 'only' one person being replaced) whereas the removal of the very notion of a carefully-planned marketing strategy would do major damage, enough that the very idea of doing so is inherently implausible. And what would it be for? Some vague notion of 'consumer freedom' or something? You say you're ignoring the moral side here but that's a hell of a lot less important than racism, sexism, and homophobia.

If you are going to make comparisons then desegregation, the rise of immigration, and the proliferation of women into the workforce are definitely significant changes in how things are run. However I'd argue that they were only accepted in the end because they offered businesses a greater opportunity for more worker exploitation as more workers = an employer's market = less pay and rights. It's why so much focus is being put onto getting women and minorities into more highly-educated roles, because they haven't had the decades of privilege that White Men have had and are therefore more prone to working jobs with low pay and poor conditions.

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Interesting to hear perspectives on that end of things for me too and LGBTQ/oppressed group stuff (I'm white cisdude so I can concede to lacking perspective there). On a longer timescale the labor movement (could probably be added to list and that definitely didn't benefit corporations)or at least the power brokers of these corporations).Very mentally stimulating discussion! I'd add more but it's quite late my timezone.

 

[Wolfapo]

What kind of annoys me is the way leakers present themselves as all knowing wizards sharing their worldy knowledge with us simple peasants. But slip up, and all that stupid internet fame is insta-gone.



The Mario and Rabbids thing sounds horrible, especially when looking back at this game being great.

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I think it goes especially for new ideas. They need to be presented or people will draw the wrong conclusions of the material leaked. It's something why Marketing and PR exists in the end. Presenting a game to the audience to make sure it's understood is not an easy task. Also, you still want to build a bit of excitement. It's part of the entertainment industry.

 

[IDreamOfHime]

After all the abuse, physical attacks and death threats that he and his family received for whistleblowing on the Tobacco industry, I wonder how Jeffrey Wigand would feel about someone leaking Nintendo direct details on Twitter being called a fellow whistleblower.

 

[giraffereyn]

Nothing ridicules about it. This multi billionaire company is a work of people and they get to decide when and where they wanna announce their work not some random person on the internet who put 0 effort in the work to get all the credit and fame for someone else work.

If you can't see how ridicules someone taking credit for others hard work, all is said.

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Can you tell me about a single famous leaker? Do these people exist beyond the interest of an enthusiast message board?

 

[Dwebble]

she's got no inside source, she went from being a marcus sellar caliber "leaker" to knowing the full e3 beat by beat. there was hacking involved, if not by her, by someone close

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If that's true (I have no idea one way or another) then she is in for a whole world of shit. Taking part in or disseminating the results of cybercrime is serious business, and her continued teasing after the Nintendo C&D is little short of braindead.

 

[Deleted member 40102]

Can you tell me about a single famous leaker? Do these people exist beyond the interest of an enthusiast message board?

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Does it matter ? They do it mostly for the attention even on the internet..... or why do you think they have the urge to leak something 2 hours- 1 day before the announcements ? They sure didn't add any benefit to the community other than to get their name(internet usename) out there.

 

[Sadist]

I'm still baffled about the Mario + Rabbids and how dismissive people were. Blind hate just because of the Rabbids.

 

[Ragaar31]

Sabi should have just posted vague hints and teases. Those are more fun and can cause discussion and speculation here. Posting straight up leaks is boring, especially hours before the real deal hit. She probably wouldn't have heard anything from Nintendo if she stuck to hints and didn't announce her announcements.