Former Nintendo staff reveal how leakers are 'immediately dealt with' inside the company
Nintendo is known for being rather unforgiving when it comes to leaks and breaches, and two former employees have revealed how the company 'immediately deals with' any internal issues that might crop up.
For most people Nintendo is the first company they think of when gaming is mentioned, as it has remained a leading force for over 40 years, in part thanks to the excellent first party games available across the various systems.
Where both PlayStation and Xbox lean heavily on third party outputs for their respective consoles, Nintendo has historically driven sales through first party software, and therefore any information that gets out can jeopardise that.
People tend to joke about Nintendo's firm stance when it comes to leaks, fan content, and piracy — especially in the wake of significant emulation issues with the Switch – but two former employees have detailed quite how far the company is willing to stretch in order to snuff out these leaks.
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As shared by Stealth40k on X, former Nintendo marketing team members Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang revealed on their 'Kit & Krysta' podcast that most Nintendo-adjacent leaks come from third-party developers, although any issues in-house are deal with 'quickly', with the implication being that the involved parties are fired.
"[Nintendo] run a pretty tight ship of the first-party side still," Krysta explained, having worked at the company for over 10 years. "You literally got the fear of God and your job, being fired, that fear was really real at Nintendo."
She also revealed that Nintendo has specific employees designed to snuff out leaked content, revealing: "We joke around about Nintendo Ninjas, but those were actual employees at the company, that is their job to investigate leaks. There is a team at Nintendo paid to do this. They are very elite and very good at their jobs."
It certainly shows that Nintendo don't play around when it comes to their own work, and that's also why certain lawsuits – including a recent one where a Michigan gamer was ordered to pay over $2 million to Nintendo – always seem to go in the company's favor.
Kit also offered advice for any of the prominent Nintendo-focused leakers out there, specifically targeting SwitchForce who has become popular in recent times by urged them to "be careful," as his former employer is known for cracking down on even the smallest things if possible.
"Yes this can be an exciting thing, everyone is on pins and needles for my next update, until you get that phone call or someone shows up at your door and you disappear," he warned.
With all these leaks continuing to crop up though, you can only wonder how much better it would be for Nintendo if they had a plumber on hand, especially one with a red hat and moustache.