Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Hit With Major Leak Ahead Of Release

Nintendo is less than two weeks away from the highly anticipated release of "Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom," but leaks have already popped up on Discord, Reddit, and even image-hosting site Imgur. Needless to say, if you've been waiting eagerly for the game, you might want to steer clear of social media to avoid spoilers, which are now making rounds of the internet in the form of screenshots, cutscenes, and brief gameplay footage.

According to one mega thread on Reddit documenting the leak, more than one person got a hold of the upcoming game's physical copy and posted 15-second clips online. The leaked footage was apparently streamed on Discord, as well, with nearly 1,000 users tuning into the stream after invites were shared online. One of the admins reportedly told the audience that the footage will soon be uploaded to various unnamed file-sharing sites.

The successor to "Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," Nintendo's upcoming title is slated for a worldwide release on May 12, while pre-orders went live in February. In the meanwhile, if you seek to stay away from spoilers, the best way forward is muting or blocking keywords like "Legend of Zelda," "Tears of the Kingdom," "TOTK," and even some of the key character's names on social media platforms.

While the leak in itself is a huge deal, as Nintendo is now essentially playing a frantic game of copyright takedowns with the leakers, the game itself appears to have leaked out in its entirety. "Can confirm that the game is now out in the wild and can be played via Emulation or CFW Switch," says one of the Reddit leak threads. This thread, in particular, has a vast collection of screenshots and video footage hosted on Streamable. The leaked footage appears to have been recorded using the Ryujinx emulator for Nintendo's Switch series of consoles and was rendered in up to 30fps formats. Moreover, the footage was reportedly streamed on Kick and Trovo before being taken down.

An image of the game's physical case was shared on Twitter; it was apparently sold ahead of the release. The Discord servers involved in the leak are getting shut down, likely following a request from Nintendo, and there are claims that a pirated copy of the game was spotted on torrent sites. The formats of the leaked files appear to be in line with Nintendo's official game cartridges. So far, the gaming studio hasn't shared an official statement.