We had previously warned you that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had leaked. At the time, we only knew that people needed to worry about seeing spoilers. However, we didn’t know at the time the risk that it could take for the leakers themselves.
Former Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime went after one such leaker, bragging about getting a copy of the game up and running on their Nintendo Switch console. Reggie went out of his way to screenshot the interaction, which was timely as the leaker already deleted their tweet.
Reggie quoted Liam Neeson in Taken, referencing the “I will find you and kill you” meme, just falling short of using that actual line. The meme can be traced online to as early as 2012, four years after the movie Taken itself was released. For those of you who don’t understand the meme, as explained by Know Your Meme, it’s used as a popular reaction meme, “as a punchline dealing with various pet peeves that people face in everyday life and social media.”
For all of the talk about how scary it is to deal with Nintendo’s lawyers, or their proverbial Nintendo ninjas, none of that seems to be as terrifying as the prospect of someone like Reggie Fils-Aime putting you on blast online.
As these tweets point out, what happens when someone as high profile as Reggie goes up on your radar is the entire internet has a laugh at your expense. As of this writing, the account has already deactivated.
Now, we should remember that Reggie is just having fun online. While he definitely wouldn’t like to see people pirating or leaking games, especially Nintendo’s, he is a former employee of the company.
We also know the post will lead to discourse over Nintendo and gamers vs game companies, so we’d like to remind our readers that big games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and also the likes of Redfall and Forspoken, get released thanks to the effort of thousands of people. From the game’s programmers, designers, and testers, to marketing departments and distributors, to the people who sell you the games in-store at GameStop. Their jobs are all tied up to successful game releases, and it harms them when gamers don’t just leak the games early, but pirate them.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will properly release on May 12, 2023. The game is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, and don’t let any leakers make you think otherwise.
