Earlier this year, Nintendo was on the receiving end of a massive source code leak. Since then, we've heard and discovered all sorts of things about the company's older video games and hardware.
The leaks haven't stopped, either. In the latest development, there's now been another Pokémon one, but this time it's rather different as it's tied to a current-generation game on the Nintendo Switch.
You see, an early debug version of Pokémon Sword has allegedly been leaked online. Fortunately, it doesn't appear to include the game's source code, based on a rundown from the Twitter user LuigiBlood:
"Yes a March 2018 build of Pokémon Sword has leaked today, alongside from what I understood to be a December 2017 build of Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee that has yet to be extracted because it was leaked as a passworded ZIP file meant to be cracked using plaintext methods."
"And just to make sure: I haven't seen anything about source code, just playable builds, nothing more."
Another Twitter user by the name of Lewtwo has been sharing screenshots of this supposed build on their own account. As it's apparently a prototype from March 2018, a lot of it is work in progress. Sword and Shield weren't released until November 2019.
Apart from this, there's also believed to be a 2017 build of Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! for Switch.
While past leaks have been based on older games, we imagine these current generation ones are much more concerning for Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.
[source nintendoenthusiast.com]
Comments 54
This could be interesting, I don’t condone the methods used to obtain the information but I’m always fascinated by changes made during development for whatever reason.
Probably looks like the final release
AND HERE WEEEEE GO, GO pokeball leakermon use leaker attack.
@mariomaster96 Saw the article and was expecting this kind of comment. I don't even hate Sword and Shield but I find it funny lol.
Nintendo get ready your katana swords !
I've been looking at this leak, it seems like they had some Pokémon in this build that were cut from the finished game. That means they deliberately cut Pokémon. The "We couldn't port the models" excuse was a lie. Same thing with the time restraint excuses because they had the time to put these Pokémon in and then remove them again.
It's a shame GameFreak is doing this to Pokémon...
It would be interesting to see if new, non-reused 3D Pokémon models for legacy Pokémon were ever present in Sword or Shield at any time during development, as was claimed by the developers (reported in June and July 2019 by Famitsu and Polygon respectively) when explaining the challenge of bringing the series to the Switch. Bear in mind that one of the many problems many fans have with The Pokémon Company/Game Freak today is not that they reused 3D models in Sword and Shield, which itself is common practice and is generally fine, but that they specifically said they didn't in interviews while doing the opposite, effectively misleading players who have otherwise been very loyal customers for many years and absolutely deserve better. There is no reason to mislead players. Relatedly, a Game Freak art director later publicly liked a social media post indirectly calling critical fans the C-word, in case the dishonest PR weren't enough to alienate fans.
It would be nice to see if that statement was actually true at some point in development. Then again, summer 2019 would have been very late in development for them to still be designing and animating models, might just be wishful thinking.
Famitsu (JP):
https://s.famitsu.com/news/201906/13177936.html
Polygon (EN):
https://www.polygon.com/pokemon/2019/7/13/20693069/pokemon-sword-shield-pokedex-limited-game-freak-statement-nintendo-switch
Sword/Shield art director C-word tweet:
https://imgur.com/g5ma1VP
Oh, how the cookie crumbles! And at the actual best possible time, too! What a joke this gen has been...
OOhhhhh... hmmm. I wonder if this is connected to the other leaks. they've been getting more frequent and skipped gens 5 and 7 and now we're here. Pokemon has always been notorious for leaks but this makes me wonder if the person responsible has something against gamefreak
@DeathByLasagna well I mean I liked SwSh too and look forward to tomorrow (release of the DLC) but that doesnt mean that you can't be critical about it ^^
@EmmatheBest Yeah I finally just said no by not buying the DLC. Still have hope future gens and a remake of gen 4 will be good but as of right now I'm over it
Well I looked thru, they reused a lot of USUM assets as expected. What's more interesting is that there was a statue of a GMAX Pikachu, a pink girl Rotomdex, and emotes for online...that included clefairy flipping the bird
£40 says it has the same trees!
@JustMe Tourtus said ‘some Pokémon’. ‘Some’ of those 20 Pokémon in this leaked build were cut from the final game. So why are you name-calling?
“Early build” you mean the final game
Kind of interesting that in the early build they didn't have fences, though I'm fairly certain that there was nothing off the trail so that's kind of a mute point.
@Tourtus None of that is new information. Anyone who parroted those excuses did so knowing they were lies even before the games came out.
@Heavyarms55 I see no hatred towards the franchise just jokes about bad tree textures and small number of Pokemon in the Dex.
Why not look up the definition of hatred? Also on the whole franchise? Not even close!
Yeah, with new stuff like this, it's hard to picture as a mere oversight over a semi-abandoned storage. Either cunning cybertheft or someone inexplicably eager to rat away their own career.
@Menardi trust a fan to imply that "indirectly using calling fans indignant c***s is a PR misstep, although the phrase describes all fans to a T and public relations imply worrying about relations with the public, the customers therein - not the dirty fan demons that inhabit the public's minds. Yes, I also think the wording could have dispensed with expletives, but I wasn't the one on the receiving end of a fanheaded drama over a tabloid-translated commentary either.
Cool so we can see a game with more bugs and less content. I doubt they did anything interesting between then and launch.
@JustMe I said they had SOME that aren't in the final build. But hey, I guess it's easier to skim over comments.
@Kameken Far too many people bought into those lies and some still believe them. Now we've got definitive proof they were lies. No one can deny it.
@Tourtus They put 20 Pokémon as placeholder from completely different generations. It's clear that it is a test to see how the engine and overall systems are working. Don't speak about development in a pre-alpha if you don't know how development works.
@Nemesis666 Why remove them? They worked in the BETA so why couldn't they keep them? If they needed placeholders why not just add ones that could be used in the finished game? It seems odd to purposely remove them, lot's of developers leave placeholder text, sounds, levels and more in the finished products. They went back in to deliberately cut these out of the game for some reason.
@Heavyarms55 Considering that Pokemon is the no.1 media franchise in term of revenue, I see no reason to be critical. This is not a small indie company trying their best. It's arguably the biggest gaming franchise, yet their games feel like a mediocre afterthought. The franchise deserves so much more, and there is so much more potential. Every new entry just feel like the bare minimum to keep the ball rolling and the money flowing. I would love it if Pokemon got the treatment BOTW got (not in terms of redesigning, but in terms of budget), or even half the budget a game like The Last of Us got. And it's possible. The games can be so much better, and it's disappointing they aren't. If you're not critical, things will never improve.
This isn't hatred. If anything, it shows how passionate people are about it.
A confirmation of everything we had suspected. Ever since gen 6 gamefreak has been doing the bare minimum. I love Pokémon, I just wish it goes back to the heights of the DS era games.
How much worse must an early version of this game be?
@Heavyarms55 It is not a hatred. This is how people who have loved a franchise for decades react when they, and the games, have been done a disservice in the form of uninspired game development since X/Y. Pokemon deserves so much better, so so much better and thats all we want for it. Simple. Pokemon could be the AAA face of Nintendo. However, efforts need to be made to challenge the Pokemon Company as well, since the PC's insistence on a new TV series and toys every year require a new game to release first, no matter the quality.
@mariomaster96 I like the "probably" there, implying that you haven't actually looked into it and you just wanted an opportunity to complain like a complete sad act. Along with the other brainless sheep that liked your dumb remark.
As it happens, it doesn't look like the finished product, because it isn't.
And yes I'm fully aware the wild area and animations look like garbage but holy hell dude, the game's like a year old, get a life, get over it, and shut up.
@LilMuku I'll quote myself cause you obviously can't read: "well I mean I liked SwSh too and look forward to tomorrow (release of the DLC) but that doesnt mean that you can't be critical about it ^^"
Also here is the definition of a "Joke" cause you appear to not know what that is: "something, such as a funny story or trick, that is said or done in order to make people laugh"
I hope I could help you
Skimming through these early development build screenshots is pretty interesting, you can see that they're working on the engine for a new platform, which includes how the graphics are delivered.
They use placeholder models from Sun and Moon as an engine test.
A lot of people will immediately conclude "Game Freak is lazy they could've just re-used the Sun/Moon models", but there is more complexity to modelling than just the geometry.
A new engine will need new data formats for models, and though one would hope you could run some sort of conversion process that might not work. There could still be a lot of manual production of models involved such as all of the texture formats to achieve consistent visuals.
20 Pokemon in the early build? Seems like dexit was originally going to be a lote more severe. Thankfully gamers pushed back after the E3 announcment and they had a change of heart
4chan... the best sourse for your gaming news...
It is interesting, it shows Pokémon on the splash screen that were only in the dlc
Having seen the screenshots... I kinda like the look of the game better that way. Sure it's got low poly models, but at least it looks pretty cohesive as an art style.
@Heavyarms55 is wrong for us Pokémon games to new games of the franchise be the best game of the franchise(a Pokémon version of BOTW) after GEN 5(the pinnacle of the franchise)the franchise went with a downward spiral of disapointement, Game Freak need to stop pretending/acting like a small unown indie company, they develop the mainline games of the number 1 franchise in term of renevue, we deserve at least a game that equal this, why Legend of Zelda have Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Super Mario have Super Mario Odyssey?the best game of this respective franchises, why Pokémon can't have this similar kinda of treatment that Mario, Legend of Zelda and possibly Metroid have(Metroid Prime 4)?all Pokémon games since GEN 5, have been quite barebones, this is not the kinda of treatment i expect for a Pokémon game.
Clearly a LOT of users here are privy to most of Game Freak and TPC's development process. All based on a single build! Who knew? Please do tell, what do they plan on doing next? Pokemon Crossbow? Will the next region be set in Australia?
Every game franchise needs and deserves its fair share of constructive criticism. And to be fair, I haven't played any of the Switch games yet. However, it seems backwards to criticize the final product of a game based on an early, unfinished build.
@Tourtus they probably were broken in some way. The animations don't work or the actual moveset crashed the game in some way. Or maybe when they were importing the rest of the pokemon they did not work correctly and they had to scrap it and choose from a list of returning pokemon that they could invest time in making. This is not a grand conspiracy this is common development practice where when scope becomes bloated you have to cut down in one area to complete the project on time.
Did you know that the first Elder Scrolls you could go to any region or how Dagger Fall is more than four times the size of Morrowind and you could go to High Rock and Hammerfell? It be like modern ES fans complaining that in the latest ES games you can't go to other regions when you could in the first two games.
Oh boy. An early build of the worst game in the franchise in a long chain of lackluster games starting with X & Y. The only appeal this game had for me was shiny hunting. They even managed to ruin the joy in that by making it extremely exploitable.
@RupeeClock thank god a sensible comment. And that is the best explanation I've seen.
@LilMuku You okay?
@UmbreonsPapa This is the best reply to any comment I've ever gotten no cap
@graysoncharles Dude you have no idea
I did have a load but I nearly OD'd on them when I got to Shield's postgame
An additional build has leaked online since this article was published, and Lewtwo is giving more coverage.
Still all pretty neat stuff.
@nhSnork I'm not even sure I'm fully understanding your comment. I think you would be hard-pressed not to describe an employee calling paying customers who've purchased their products since before you were born the C-word as anything but a "PR misstep" at best. It's generally a good idea in most industries not to dismiss your longtime customers' feedback and call them expletives while doing it (then again, Pokémon's bread and butter is in merchandising now, hence why the games are an after-thought. Maybe they're right in the short-term to not care about their players anymore?). It's also worth noting that not every person on the planet who dislikes Sword and Shield was writing death threats to the developers, it would be ridiculous, disingenuous, and a little pitiful to lump anyone and everyone in with the fringe and dismiss legitimate criticism in the process.
@Octane Couldn't have said it better myself. Pokémon deserves to be a stronger series than it is. It's unfortunate to see so many vehemently defend the sad, lazy, half-baked "one half-step forward, five steps back" husk it is today; criticizing what it is now is not a slight against Pokémon as a whole. The vast majority of those who criticize recent releases do so from a place of love and a passion for what they feel the series should be doing today, it's something to commend, not snipe down or dismiss. Breath of the Wild would not have happened had Skyward Sword not received fair player feedback. Really is a shame so many Pokémon fans refuse to allow that much-needed exchange of ideas, preferring blind Apple-esque brand loyalty to a healthy relationship between players and developers.
No, I think you mistook the finished game for an early build my friend 😉
@Menardi the C word tweet reminds me of the ROVIO youtube account liking a comment saying "these bring back 2012 people are annoying." For context, almost every angrybirds game was taken off the app store and people have been saying bring back 2012 as their slogan kinda like "bringbacknationaldex"
@Christofu A little more appropriate, I'd take that over James Turners' any day. What's funny is that the tweet he liked specifically singled out Reddit for being critical of Sword and Shield. Pretty sure Pokémon fans everywhere were making the same criticisms, and probably worse. Even Nintendo representatives were politely agreeing with many of the criticisms at the time of Sword and Shield's release.
Huh I guess sword is better
@Heavyarms55 As we all know, critising a game is bad and if you do it automatically lose your title of "fan" of a franchise.
@Menardi yeah gamefreak has really fallen from grace since Iwata's passing on. I think they had plenty of ambition and passion before but without his help they just cant seem to achieve what they want and they don't want to admit it
Also that really sucks that Turner is doing that. Hurt enough seeing Sugimori wasn't leading art anymore.
Pokémon Fans used Revive:
Pointless arguement from last year regained 20hp!
Clicking on this article was a mistake. One I should have known better about now. My opinions are not welcome on this topic.
I apologize for wasting everyone's time.
@RPGamer i think people have already realized that for a long time, lol. They will continue to sell, as all games with the same issue do, sadly.
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