 Before I get into this video, I want to remind you that we are giving away a Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo Switch OLED Edition, also a Collector's Edition of Tears of the Kingdom, and a pin for PAX East. To enter all you have to do is go down to the pinned comment or the description, click on the link. The winner will be drawn this Friday, May 12th winners, I guess there are three different ones. We're also on our road to 133,000 subscribers, so I'd appreciate if you would subscribe to the channel as we try to match 133 years of Nintendo. Alright guys, we have a couple things to talk about here with Tears of the Kingdom, so there's going to be a timestamp below, splitting this up into two parts. The first part is Nintendo doing some, well, very Nintendo-like things, and these stories are semi-related because Nintendo is, they're not happy. Let's just put it this way. Look, Tears of the Kingdom, you know, leaked over a week ago at this point. Only one week ago, right? It came out last week Monday, here we are a week later, and Tears of the Kingdom's been out there. Some people have beaten the game, some people have, you know, 40, 50, 60 hours into it, etc, etc, etc. The game has leaked a long time ago, and we're not talking about, like, physical copies sold online, we're talking about the damn thing actually being on the internet in a playable form. That has been out since last week Monday, and Nintendo has been doing its best to shut down as much as they can. Now, I've seen some reports out there that Nintendo has shut down thousands of Twitch accounts that have attempted to stream Tears of the Kingdom. That's not surprising. They've also shut down a bunch of YouTube accounts that have attempted to stream Tears of the Kingdom, and they've even gotten TikTok to take down some stuff as well. They've gotten Twitter to take down some stuff. Nintendo has been doing their best to shut down the leaks as best as they can. Of course, it's basically impossible once something becomes openly available on the internet to shut everything down. But Nintendo is now seemingly turning their attention to potential future game leaks, realizing, hey, look, maybe we've been going about this all wrong, and we need to find a different way to stop future leaks. So what did Nintendo do? Well, a handful of days ago, they actually issued a DMCA takedown request to GitHub. Now GitHub is a place where people upload free pieces of code work and stuff like this to share with the masses. It's typically completely open source. And look, it's a place that as someone who's been into programming has a lot of useful information on it. A lot of programmers sharing information. But one such program that was shared on there is a program called Lockpick. Now, Lockpick is something that you would use on a hacked Nintendo Switch. And what it is for, it's intended use, and really the only thing it allows is for you to dump keys from your own Switch. So you would have to have an own Nintendo Switch games and then be able to dump them with this. So they have to be your own games. This tool is only useful for yourself. It's not useful for others, sort of, because here's the problem with Lockpick. I use the word problem loosely because obviously Lockpick is literally just about dumping your own keys, which is 100% legal because you are allowed, at least in the United States, to make backups of your digital goods. That is something that is allowed. It's that how do you think the ROMs become available to download online? What do you think helps with that? What do you think causes distribution of ROMs? Things like Lockpick being used by someone who wants to distribute. They would use Lockpick to dump their game keys and then put that stuff online for people to download. That's not Lockpick's fault. Lockpick is just a tool, but Nintendo clearly wants to take out even the tools. And as of today, Lockpick has been successfully taken down by Nintendo. Now I'm sure there's other versions online and Lockpick has been preserved and is up on other websites. Look, you're not going to be able to stop people from doing this, but Nintendo is trying to send a message that, hey, you know what, we actually think people just shouldn't be able to dump their keys, legal or not, because it is leading two weeks like tears of the kingdom. Obviously, this hasn't gone to the courts and Nintendo hasn't had to defend their actions there. GitHub is just going to avoid lawsuit actions because they clearly don't want to go into what could be a multi-million dollar lawsuit with Nintendo and they've just taken it down. So it's interesting because I think this leads to our second conversation and our second point in this video. And that is that Nintendo, because of tears of the kingdom, because of this being arguably their most high profile game to leak out there, I know Scarlet and Violet was a really big deal last year, but they had leaks going on for that game since summer. So what have we really learned from the game leaking out there besides the performance was pretty bad? Look, Nintendo doesn't have a lot of games that you could argue are not only game of the year contenders, but game of the generation contenders, right? Occasionally, a Mario game or a Zelda game pops up or some unique special circumstantial game like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. But when a game like this of this caliber leaks and Nintendo is this upset about it, that they're actually DMZ taking down Lockpick, which has been up on GitHub for years, they never went after it before, it makes you wonder if tears of the kingdom and it leaking out there is unfortunately going to cause a change at Nintendo. And I'm sure they're rethinking this right now and this isn't me saying that Nintendo is no longer going to support physical games. They did report in their last financial briefing that digital sales have finally surpassed physical sales percentage wise in terms of number of units being sold so digital is a rapidly growing sector for Nintendo. I think what we saw them do a Metroid Prime remaster is sort of a taste of what Nintendo might be willing to do in the future. What do I mean? Nintendo releasing physical copies weeks after the digital version launches. They wouldn't be the first company to do this, other companies have offered paid programs to get digital copies early, but Nintendo, when they launched Metroid Prime remaster, they dropped, this was a shadow drop, but they dropped the digital version and then it was two weeks later before you get the physical version. Now why two weeks later? Because once the digital version is out there, the game leaking isn't as big of a deal or once the digital version is out there. And all of the leaks, every single game leak in basically Nintendo Switch's history, all the games that have come out before the game, you know, come out in ROM form before the game was available came from physical copies out in the wild. And since Nintendo has to send them through distribution and all these channels so they get to retailers on time for people to pick them up day one, well what Nintendo was no longer concerned about that because there was going to be a digital release date and then a separate later physical release date. And I think Metroid Prime remaster sort of gave Nintendo a roadmap, not necessarily the shadow dropping, but the idea that you know what, we can get away with dropping digital first, physical later to avoid leaks. And that is not something many of us want to see because most of us, I shouldn't say most of us, there is a segment of us that will be unwilling to buy a digital copy and will hold out for physical and it's going to feel like we're getting leaks anyways, except the leaks are sort of intentional because the game is actually already out there and you're just choosing to wait for a physical copy. But look, this would pretty much solve all of Nintendo's problems. Nintendo's leak situation becomes a non-factor, not just with Switch, but with future platforms, if they stop putting physical forward at the same time as digital. I don't want them to do this, but the other solutions aren't great either, right? Nintendo could introduce DRM into all of their games requiring online connections. That's not good. Nintendo could obviously just cancel physical altogether and go digital only. We already have Xbox and PlayStation, both with digital only platforms. And for the most part, physical with PlayStation and Xbox is just an unlock key. You still got to install the game. So, I'm just saying that if Nintendo's policies change on their next system and you start to see them launch digital games before physical or they announce their system, you know, hopefully not without physical support, but without physical support, just look back at what happened with Tears of the Kingdom, how Nintendo is going after GitHub and going just beyond what they've done with other game leaks. And remember, Nintendo was so pissed that they decided now is the time. Our next system launches. We're not going to have this happen again if our system gets hacked. On one hand, I don't blame them. On the other hand, for people that want physical and obviously want a day one, it's pretty disappointing. So, again, it's none of us legit customers' faults. I want to make this clear. If this change happens, it is not your fault. If you bought a legal copy for launch day, you bought the collector's edition, you bought the digital version, it's not your fault. This is one of those things that when people are breaking laws and doing things Nintendo doesn't like, Nintendo can tend to overcorrect. Except in this case, I don't know if it's an overcorrection when it's been happening with every game. At some point, Nintendo has to make a change and this could be that change. So I just wanted you to keep this in the back of your mind. This isn't me trying to be negative about Tears of the Kingdom. I'm super stoked and super excited for this game. But it's a reality that we might be facing as soon as the next platform launches. Anyways, guys, I am Nathaniel Rumpeljantz from Nintendo Prime. I want to thank you for tuning in. Let me know your thoughts on this down in the comments below and I'll catch you in the next video.