Nintendo Accidentally Copyright Strikes Itself In Its Effort To Combat 'Tears Of The Kingdom' Leaks

For avid gamers, it's no secret that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo's hotly-anticipated sequel to Breath of the Wild, leaked pretty extensively about ten days ago, two weeks before the game's release this Friday.

Nintendo, a company notorious for squashing leaks, leakers and any fun its fans have that it doesn't approve of, has naturally been militant about striking any Twitch streamers, YouTubers and content creators elsewhere from showing footage from the Tears of the Kingdom leak, and is reportedly pursuing legal action against Switch emulators (which are used by people who have been playing the leaked game so far).

However, in their whack-a-mole approach to squashing leaks, they've mistakenly whacked a few moles who are merely discussing the game using already-released footage. This includes themselves.

Noticed by Twitter user unangbangkay, the official Zelda Japan Twitter account was briefly smacked with a copyright strike from Nintendo for discussing some new features of Tears of the Kingdom.

The media in the tweet has since been restored, but it's far from the only instance of Nintendo erring in its quest to kill any leaked info about Tears of the Kingdom from spreading. Austin John Plays reported he was hit with a copyright strike for discussing footage shown in IGN's video about the game. Streamer Alanah Pearce reported her stream got unceremoniously cut off while she was watching footage from YouTuber SkillUp's preview video of the game.

Tears of the Kingdom releases Friday, so soon Nintendo's great DMCA hammer may rest until the next big release. Hopefully, they won't whack themselves with it next time a Nintendo product inevitably leaks.