Nintendo is going after the leaker behind major Pokémon ‘Teraleak’

Nintendo is asking a California court to force Discord to give up the identity of the person behind last year’s massive Pokémon data breach, known among the Pokémon community as the “Teraleak.” It’s called the Teraleak because of just how much information was released online; the leaker claimed to have source code for the upcoming game Pokémon Legends: Z-A (though they did not release it), as well as next-generation Pokémon titles, builds of older games, and loads of concept art and lore documents.

Nintendo filed its request for a subpoena on April 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, per the documents obtained by Polygon, seeking the name, address, phone number, and email address of the leaker. The company alleged in a declaration accompanying the subpoena request that a Discord user named GameFreakOUT posted the “confidential materials not released to the public” to a Discord server called FreakLeak. From that Discord, the leaked materials spread far and wide; Nintendo attempted to take down materials with DMCA requests, but the internet persisted.

The purpose of the subpoena is “to obtain the identity of the Discord user ‘GameFreakOUT,’ who posted infringing content,” wrote James D. Berkley, an attorney for Nintendo. Alongside the declaration, Nintendo included a partially redacted screenshot of the Discord server, in which the user GameFreakOUT posted a file and told users to “enjoy.”

The Pokémon leaks were published around Oct. 12, 2024, but Game Freak announced in a statement on Oct. 10, before the information was released, that it had been hacked. In the statement, Game Freak said that the breach impacted employee information, but did not confirm that confidential game information had been stolen.

Subpoenas like this do not necessarily indicate a forthcoming lawsuit, though it seems likely that Nintendo would take the leaker to court; the company has done that before, specifically with Pokémon, when photos of a Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield strategy guide were distributed online. Given the materials that the leaker said they obtained — like an early version of the upcoming Legends: Z-A game — Nintendo would surely appreciate having the court’s backing to prevent that data from leaking.