Nintendo of America has dropped their huge hammer with the sticker “change” plastered on. Just a month a go, the Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga and Bowser’s Minions remake for the Nintendo 3DS was leaked ahead from its launch date. Apparently, with this incident Nintendo of America changed their review copy distribution policy – reports from USGamer and Eurogamer said.
The leaked copy was revealed on the 3DSPiracy subreddit that it was seen on 4Chan and several ISO sites. It was also confirmed by pirates that the game is indeed real.
According to the reports from the US and UK publication mentioned above, Nintendo of America secretly reacted to this situation by getting more stricter with their review copy policy. It came from multiple sources that it was to respond with the leak, a source told USGamer:
“After the leak of Mario & Luigi, done by an influencer, [Nintendo of America] flipped out and changed their review policy. Plenty of outlets and influencers are without [Fire Emblem Warriors] and [Super Mario Odyssey]… Apparently, it will be [sent out] in tiers, but [I’m] not sure how they are set up.”
It was revealed that it was done by an influencer who received an early pre-release copy of the leaked game. Further investigations were done by Nintendo of America, and the publisher was able to pinpoint who was the culprit. It seems that each copy sent to selected outlets and influencers got some sort of a “serial number” hidden in the files of the game, and this is how they were able to spot who the leaker was.
“Nintendo knows who did it. [Nintendo] downloaded the leaked [ROM], checked the files and found the 3DS serial attached.”
With this incident, the source also added that Nintendo is going to punish not just the person who was responsible but other outlets and influencers as a result of this unacceptable action.
Some outlets and influencers have even confirmed that they did not receive their copies yet for Super Mario Odyssey.
However, with Nintendo of America changing their style and punishing most media people, Nintendo of Europe hasn’t changed their policy yet according to Eurogamer.
This is to show that Nintendo of America is not taking this lightly and that review copies sent to publications and influencers should respect and abide the policies, especially getting the game leaked and exploited by pirates.
In the end, smaller outlets and aspiring content creators are going to get hit hard with this change all thanks to that one “influencer” = which people are already pointing out that it’s a YouTuber.
Source: USgamer
