About half a year after a major Pokémon leak, Nintendo is finally looking to identify the culprit and is taking legal action.
Which leak is being referred to? In October 2024, a Discord user named GameFreakOUT released confidential Pokémon information on the Discord server FreakLeak. The consequence: The materials not intended for public release were published online with the poster’s comment “Have fun” (and without Nintendo’s consent).
Nintendo now wants to find out the true identity of GameFreakOUT and has requested a subpoena from a California court to force Discord to assist them in the hunt for the leaker.
Here you can see the trailer for Pokémon Legends: Z-A:
Nintendo demands information
How is Nintendo proceeding? On April 18, 2025, Nintendo filed a subpoena request against Discord in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to uncover the personal details of the leaker. This includes the name, address, phone number, and email address of the Discord user, as outlined in the documents, published by Polygon.
An attorney for Nintendo, James D. Berkley, stated that the purpose of this action is to discover the identity of the Discord user GameFreakOUT, who posted infringing content.
What did the leaks contain? In the Pokémon community, this data leak from last year is known as the “Teraleak,” which emerged from the sheer volume of leaked content.
The leaks included confidential employee data from Game Freak, unreleased materials for the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A, as well as other Pokémon titles of the next generation, builds of older games, and a wealth of concept art and lore documents.
Furthermore, the leaker claimed to have obtained the source code for Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which the person did not publish.
This is definitely not the first (and certainly not the last time) that outsiders have gained access to confidential data about games and their companies. On X, another user named Centro LEAKS shared another hint about the upcoming Pokémon title that revealed that a popular aspect of previous Pokémon games will not make it into Legends: Z-A: Pokémon Legends: Z-A – New leak reveals that a popular aspect from the predecessor will not be present
