Nintendo’s lawyers have filed a DMCA application in pursuit of the leaker who shared Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s art book on Discord.
Earlier this year, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom‘s 200-page art book leaked online, featuring designs for new characters, locations, and enemies.
A scanned version of the tome initially appeared on Reddit, with the parties responsible for the leak seemingly leaving no trace of their identities.
Two months later, the notoriously litigious Nintendo had a few suspects in mind. And the company’s subpoenaing Discord got to the bottom of the ongoing investigation.
Nintendo is going after the Zelda leaker on Discord
According to a report from TorrentFreak, Nintendo issued a DMCA complaint to Discord just days after the art book leak in February.
The notice mentioned the “Tears of the Kingdom Official Discord Server,” an unofficial channel that featured six URLs showcasing images or linked to images from the publisher’s unreleased Tears of the Kingdom art book.
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Discord immediately promised to remove the material that violated Nintendo’s rights. Within a matter of hours, the publisher requested an “immediate review and takedown” of the channel, claiming its members were still sharing copyrighted content without permission.
Ever meticulous, Nintendo additionally provided Discord with screenshots of four users whose activity in the server was tied to the internally assigned “role of ‘The PDF Pirate’ which identifies them as a source for PDF files of the infringing art book images.” Discord soon thereafter issued a warning to the server about its infringing behavior.
Nintendo of America has now taken it a step further, filing a DMCA subpoena application on Friday, April 7 at a California district court.
Mentioning the notices sent to Discord and the Zelda Tears of the Kingdom leak, the complaint requests that Discord disclose the identity of the leaker, specifically calling for the names, addresses, phone numbers, and any other information connected to the offending account.