Another big Nintendo game has been leaked onto the internet before becoming officially available in shops or for download.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom may not be as big a title as Tears of the Kingdom, which caused such a fuss when it was leaked more than a week before release, leading to many illegal downloads, and ultimately saw Nintendo go after popular Switch emulator Yuzu after highlighting that it had openly been seen to be supporting loading of the leaked game in forums and Reddit. But it is still a big Nintendo game that has once again escaped the net.
Echoes of Wisdom is Zelda’s first-ever solo adventure, Link is nowhere to be found when it comes to protagonists but interest has remained high in the game, although many Zelda fans see it as more of a spinoff than a mainline Legend of Zelda adventure, Nintendo will still be looking for big sales however as it will likely be the final Zelda outing before the Switch 2 arrives.
Nintendo has constantly struggled to keep its Switch games from being leaked onto torrent sites with many games being available to download days before release. Because of the nature of the copy protection however, it is difficult to play them on the Switch itself – playing ROMs involves having an old, hacked Switch with a vulnerability that has long since been patched out.
There are no such issues generally for playing the ROMs on an emulator however and even though Yuzu is no more there are still other Switch emulators that are regularly updated as emulation itself is not illegal as such and lives within a gray area of the law.
It is difficult to prevent leaks of games as physical cartridges have to be sent to retail outlets or code sent to reviewers and influencers ahead of time. It only takes one person to dump the ROM and upload it to a pirate site and the horse has bolted.
At least this time it is only a few days before launch so avoiding spoilers for those who want to legitimately play the game might not be as traumatic.
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