According to former Nintendo marketing managers Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, the company is pretty great at preventing first-party leaks – but when it comes to third-party leaks, things become a bit more complicated.
Ellis and Yang address leaks while speaking in a new podcast entry on YouTube, explaining that Nintendo actually hires employees to prevent any from happening in the first place. "We joke around about Nintendo ninjas," describes Yang, but there are "actual employees at the company" whose job is "to investigate leaks" – and they do so well. "There is a team at Nintendo that gets paid to do this. They are very elite, they're very good at their jobs."
Yang continues, recalling her and Ellis' experience at Nintendo with how the company would handle leaks. "We've been part of many conversations with them in the past when leaks have happened and they're trying to get at the source of how a leak happened," she recounts, "and they're very precise about finding the information that they need to solve the case – so they're still doing a lot of work internally to make sure none of the first-party stuff leaks."
When it comes to third-party leaks, however, Yang admits that they're a lot harder to contain – and that is due in part to the fact that it's no longer Nintendo's responsibility to do so, but rather another developer's or producer's instead. "Once you leave the secure ring, the secure lockdown of Nintendo, then it becomes much harder for Nintendo to control it," says the former marketing lead, with "it" meaning leaks here.
Ellis concludes, questioning "if there are some steps that they can take with the third-party partners" to prevent leaks. He does state that "you can never impose the very extreme rules that you have internally upon them," though – and it is those "very extreme rules" Nintendo has that seem to primarily prevent any first-party leaks from going out. Nonetheless, the question of what other steps could possibly be taken for third-party games still stands.
Listening to the conversation, I'm reminded of the recent Nintendo Direct leaks – which were confirmed just yesterday – although admittedly, those are less software-related and more to do with the showcase itself happening.
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