 Yesterday we talked about IGN and some mistakes they made and how they handled their preview coverage specifically in Japan. I know a lot of people focused on what I said about the US team but the US team might have even had permission to talk about what they talked about so we're not going to get into that and that cover just still up and Nintendo never took it down but they did take down the stuff in Japan. So I just wanted to be a little forward that this isn't about them but it is interesting to see another major outlet this time Kotaku claiming to have some problems with Tears of the Kingdom and Nintendo and this is something that is very strange to talk about but also exemplifies that even major mass media are not exempt from Nintendo's wrath. Now before I dive into what's happening here with Kotaku and Tears of the Kingdom I want to remind you that we are giving away a Zelda Nintendo Switch OLED we're also giving away a Tears of the Kingdom special edition also giving away a Tears of the Kingdom pin from PAX East so that's really cool you can download the pin comment or the description to enter also we're on our road to 133,000 subscribers we're trying to match 133 years that Nintendo has existed. Now look guys when we're talking about Kotaku it's pretty obvious a lot of people like crapping on Kotaku that's been true for a long time a lot of people like crapping on IGN as well it's no secret why the IGN video did so well yesterday a lot of people like looking down on mass video game media and I want to note that I don't think everyone that works at these places is bad or evil maybe the overall corporation I have no idea but individuals at these companies are typically really well written and really well learned and learned I suppose and I actually respect a lot of video game journalists but when mistakes are made mistakes are made and you need to pay the consequences and in the case of Kotaku they made a mistake way back in 2021 and unfortunately for them they're paying the price for that mistake but they seem unwilling to at least admit to it So Kotaku writer Ethan Gatch went out on Twitter to say this yesterday about their coverage of Tears of the Kingdom it's preview day for Tears of the Kingdom a huge game I would have loved Kotaku to be able to inform its millions of readers about firsthand unfortunately Nintendo still has it blacklisted from advanced coverage a move I would argue is both unprofessional and coercive of course missing in here is the context for why Kotaku is blacklisted because why would you provide that context if it's going to make your outlet look bad instead let's talk about how unprofessional and coercive Nintendo is being for blacklisting your outlet and not allowing it to cover Tears of the Kingdom well if you guys remember way back when Metroid Dread launched they posted an article on their website posted on October 9th 2021 the unfortunate part of course is that this article has since been edited but there's a reason it's been edited so let's go show you the original form of this article thanks to the internet archive archive org and their wayback machine we're able to get an original capture of this Metroid Dread article now the Metroid Dread article is stated Metroid Dread's already running great on switch emulators this came out on October 9th this is like basically right when Metroid Dread came out now covering emulation I think is fair game but in this article while they're talking about how well the game runs on emulation and all that stuff it's it's interesting so the article starts off by saying hey real quick if you are a Nintendo lawyer or employee just like don't read this it was a silly mistake ignore this blog you can go now okay everyone else it's almost like the writer and the people who approved of this article going live knew that Nintendo wasn't going to like it but it's specifically how they did this they basically promoted piracy day one of Metroid Dread let's scroll down and see what they get into first off they start talking about two emulators and they link directly to those emulators they're saying via yuzu open-source emulator you can now play Dread with custom controls in unlimited fps settings some players have reported minor issues with cutscenes and black screens but according to yuzu this will be fixed by updating to the latest version of their free emulator and then another popular switch emulator is Rijinks Rijinks I don't know how to pronounce it it's able to run the game at similarly high frame rates but can also play at a much higher 4k resolution so it's linking directly to emulators and emulation is not illegal so you might go well this seems fair game so what's the problem let's get to the bottom of the article now it talks about how it could run good on your pc but if pc sucks maybe it runs bad but here's the final paragraph of this if you want to play the rest of the Metroid franchise and don't want to shell out large amount of money on old consoles and games your best bet is also emulation see what they're saying they just made a whole article telling you that much of Dread is best played via emulators and then at the end encourage you to emulate even more Metroid games and you know while they don't say the words where piracy they don't say go out and download illegal copies of ROMs they aren't saying it it's very clear this article is promoting you to emulate day one Metroid Dread and the rest of the Metroid franchise you want to know how we know because they updated the article twice first this update here you see at the top of the article there is nothing about Nintendo lawyers don't watch go away it's just more background information on Metroid Dread so there was a massive edit and then at the end here's some notes editor's note per a request by Nintendo we have updated the article to generally assert that Kotaku does not promote or encourage piracy meanwhile you are promoting emulating Metroid Dread on day one Kotaku declined to enact changes that blurred the line between suggestions and aggressive line edits to preserve editorial independence you know like telling Nintendo not to look at this because they knew Nintendo would be mad then they did a second update 10 10 to 20 to 20 p.m an earlier version of the story was understood by many readers to be a direct suggestion to illegally download this just for this game because again you were promoting how well this game ran day one on emulators linking to those emulators saying you should emulate this game instead of playing it on switch didn't even mention how it plays on switch and then noted hey why don't you go just emulate the rest of the Metroid franchise while you're at it uh anyways they said we regret this interpretation it's very obvious why that was the interpretation and apologize and then they go on to see the contact with these emulations a vital part of the world the gaming blah blah blah blah but this is what got them blacklisted this article here day one of Metroid Dread or day two however you want to look at the semantics of it and it is literally pushing people to emulate Metroid Dread day one that's why Kotaku got blacklisted and to be tone deaf to that is to be silly now maybe they think it's been a couple years or a year and a half maybe we shouldn't be blacklisted anymore heck maybe the person who wrote that article doesn't work there anymore but here's the problem and I know this because we've heard how the Kotaku process works from former staff members there that had to go through an approval process that was approved by people above the writer to go out to the public as is on the launch of Metroid Dread that to me is the problem it's not that they're talking about emulation they could compare the merits of emulation but maybe don't promote emulating a just released nintendo game like what were you thinking you don't see articles going up talking about emulation of a just released playstation 4 game because by the way you can emulate ps4 today too so when a new game drops like let's say spider man miles morales nobody's sitting there day one of mile morale is coming out and being like hey let's talk about how well this game runs on an emulator like that's just you don't do that like it's nintendo specifically and i know some people will argue that nintendo deserves to be emulated deserves to be pirated and that's sort of besides the point when it comes to this argument this is a somebody who helps ronkataku complaining that nintendo will no longer give them early access to games meanwhile ignoring that they were blacklisted because they were essentially promoting piracy without using the word piracy right they were doing everything they could skirt around the word piracy what did you expect you're not going to get early access while also telling people the day one you should be playing nintendo's games on emulators what did you think was going to happen did you think nintendo was going to be cool about that nintendo after just a year and a half was going to get over it and give you direct access to their you know most beloved ip coming out this year well just you know how would they know that you wouldn't take this opportunity just for clicks to talk about how well tears of the kingdom runs day one via emulation how do they know they won't give you the copy of the game you're going to dump it and then just talk about how great it runs on emulation sure what you did isn't illegal but you think nintendo wants that article to be their day one look obviously kataku made a big mistake when it comes to wanting to maintain good relationships with nintendo you can't do what they did in that article and then expect nintendo to play ball with you so to call it unprofessional of what nintendo is doing i think it's actually unprofessional of kataku to expect review copies after promoting emulating nintendo switch games day one like let's just be honest that's unprofessional if you're going to promote that fine nintendo didn't legally go after you you are allowed to do that also when you do that that doesn't guarantee you're gonna keep getting nintendo games it's unprofessional to expect nintendo games after doing that also coercive coercive how is it coercive what nintendo is doing by not giving you access to the game you're saying that nintendo wants to control your publications um ability to post you know what they want well how about not promoting pirating nintendo games day one how coercive is that as nintendo is supposed to support something they've actively we know are against they're not going to do that so if igm was so bold as to post an article about pirating linking to emulators and and talking about how great tears of the kingdom runs via emulation day one the game comes out you think nintendo won't cut off ign they might forgive ign for leaking some some some play demo test information out there sooner than nintendo wanted it out there but they're not going to forgive ign for promoting emulating a nintendo game day one so i'm just throwing out there that kataku you did an oopsie a year and a half ago maybe swallow your pride and and and eat the mistake stop calling out nintendo and saying there'd be an unprofessional coercive over this you deserve the treatment that you're getting from nintendo and guess what your review isn't going to lose any value by publishing it a week after the fed if that was the case youtubers that do reviews won't be able to make a living doing it because most youtubers that do reviews do not get review copies of games and thus you know their reviews come out a week later a month later six months later sometimes and still garner millions and millions of views just create a really damn good review and people will tune in for it now before we sign out uh i want to give uh i want to give some thoughts here on how we handle coverage of of certain things here at nintendo prime and we're not talking about titles and thumbnails and all that kind of stuff i want to address the ign video that we made yesterday where we called out ign for posting things they weren't supposed to post because they were under n da which is a legal binding agreement to not post these things and then they still put them up there obviously they took down the video they edited it out they re-uploaded the video and i'm sure at this point nintendo's just kind of washing their hands of what was leaked i haven't seen i've seen other people on youtube literally put the images and the direct video feed in their videos without blurring anything and not getting from nintendo so i think they're sort of letting it go because they know hey all of us have access to this because of something ign did they know the source of this it isn't like they're chasing us down to strike us like they are with some of the commercial leaks and stuff where they might not know where it came from but um in that video i also discussed what the leaks were right i had the leaked footage in there i blurred everything i made one little mistake uh in blurring stuff i forgot to blur uh something around like the five minute mark or whatever i ended up telling youtube just to like trim that for that four second segment out uh and it did it took youtube like 45 minutes to process that so i did make a mistake there not blurring out that part but people were more mad that i even discussed what the leaks were because they said you're being as bad as ign and to that i just i just have to say no uh i am not another nda i was not invited to play this game early i am just a reporter i am a youtuber i am just a person discussing information that's already public should that information be public no but it is and if it's public i have a right to talk about it this does not mean my channel is going to go and spoil the whole game for you guys i have made this very clear that once the game leaks we're not talking about any more leaks for tears of the kingdom that's just the way it's going to be it doesn't matter if i see the leaks it doesn't matter if i know about it doesn't matter if i've seen hours of gameplay i'm not going to talk about any of that once the game leaks this was a demo leak and it was something that ign just did an oopsie on uh i do still stand by the fact that ign should not have leaked that information out and nintendo probably should have some sort of punishment for them although i don't think nintendo will i also have found out since making that video that ign japan i called it like a subsidiary or like a you know a just like a small part of ign they're actually owned and operated completely independent from ign here in the united states i didn't realize this at the time of publication i did i found this out uh with some research i don't get into so they're actually independently ran so they really made all these distinctions completely independent of ign uh the home ign here in the us so i just i just wanted to point out that you know i still stand by that ign shouldn't have done it but once it's done and the information's out there it is a leak and we are going to talk about it and i did warn before saying anything spoilers i think it's the spoilers in the video like four times but i know it like literally the four minute and 43 second mark i said now let's get into the spoilers and then i paused for a second and then i rambled for another 10 before i even said what the spoiler was so i gave plenty of warning and a little pause in there to dip out of the video i did that intentionally for people who wanted to avoid what the spoilers were but you know maybe it maybe in the future i could do something like throw up a warning on the screen like a spoiler warning visually not just audibly but i did technically warn so look i you can call it ethical you can say that i'm as bad as ign i wasn't under any agreement with nintendo not to talk about this stuff they were um it once it's public and everyone else is talking about it why wouldn't i right it is it's whatever you win some you lose some guys anyways guys thank you so much for tuning in i am the general judge from nintendo prime we'll catch you in the next video