Zelda, a name synonymous with gaming since the dawn of… well, since the dawn of Zelda I guess, and its latest release is due out on the 12th of May, that’s in 10 days people!
Humans, though, are not the patient type. According to a Twitter post people have been able to purchase the game almost two weeks before the actual release date, and more than that, they have been ripping it and sending it out into the wild to be played on emulators.
PCGamer was brave enough to dig through all the 4Chan links around the whole leak, and have found what seem to be “real” rips of the game posted on a host of torrent sites. They say that “the files are consistent with other Nintendo Switch rips” and “We can’t confirm that those files are genuine—but given the proliferation of streams, it’s almost certain that the game is already being distributed illegally.”
“The proliferation of streams” means that there is quite a stack of streamers out there taking the pirated copy out for a spin. Streamers on Kick and Trovo are getting just a couple of minutes of airtime before their streams get taken down. Along with all of this, there are a plethora of posts on 4Chan showing in-game imagery and a full video of gameplay footage.
It seems like Nintendo has a lot of copyright work ahead of them, but seeing how aggressively successful they’ve been in previous cases, posting yourself playing the pirated version of one of their biggest games seems like one of the silliest things you could do right now. Unless you’re just desperate for an excuse to go touch grass while you’re banned from the internet.