Does everyone remember the Nintendo game leak from 2020? It was dubbed the “Gigaleak”, and it saw a huge amount go important data being stolen and leaked all over the internet. It forced Nintendo to increase its security following the unprecedented leak of classic game data and a few of its prototypes like Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario Kart, and N64 games such as Ocarina of Time were among many to have details leaked.
The Nintendo game leak also allegedly contained internal documentation relating to the GameCube, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 64, the Nintendo Wii, and Chinese iQue. These details revealed how all these systems worked and the development process behind them, which could be easily used for replicas etc.
Nintendo has been fairly quiet when it came to this touchy subject, with the company not making any official comment about the Gigaleak. However, in the past couple of days, the incident was referenced in a question that was asked at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Japan.
Nintendo was asked during the meeting about the iQue brand and the Chinese market in general. Some people believe that the iQue may have been the source of the leaks, but there is no proof to align this theory.
In response to the questions, the president of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa said,
“The PC and mobile games market in China is large, but dedicated games consoles are not so large. Together with Tencent, we want to continue to popularise them. We are working with experts on information leaks. We have also introduced information security management.”
This Gigaleak caused an obviously huge problem for the Japanese giants, it had major effects on both the preservation and emulation of some of its titles. It gave fans a rare insight into how some of their favorite games were made by this famously secretive industry giant.
It means that this incident was the only time fans could learn the ins and outs of Nintendo’s titles, with them now increasing security, it’s back to wondering how and why things are produced.
