Has Nintendo started leaking fake information after the Pokémon leak blew up?

Brutal. This time, Nintendo isn’t trying to silence people—it’s reverse fishing. With leaks coming nonstop over the past few weeks, it has reportedly been feeding fake information directly back into its own internal channels, with one very clear goal: to see who is passing things outside.

This is not an official announcement at the moment. The source is a claim from YouTuber “Nintendo Prime.” He said he has heard from 7 different people that Nintendo is internally spreading false information to identify leakers. Nintendo has not responded so far, so for now this can only be considered a highly credible rumor, not a confirmed official statement.

The key point is not that it’s new, but that it’s being used again. The report mentions that Nintendo pulled a similar move a few years ago, which suggests this is not a spur-of-the-moment idea but a well-established tactic. The issue is that last time it still failed to identify NTH—that is, NateTheHate’s source—which shows the method has deterrent value, but not necessarily decisive results.

Nintendo Prime is not worried about the information NateTheHate has released recently, which indirectly suggests confidence in the authenticity of that batch of leaks. Considering that NateTheHate previously mentioned things like a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and a brand-new Star Fox, and that some of his information was later corroborated by industry media, his track record does carry more weight than most accounts. But there’s no need to mythologize him—the report also makes it very clear that he is not 100% accurate.

It’s not hard to understand why Nintendo would resort to this tactic again. It is already one of the most secretive companies in the industry, yet related leaks have continued to spill out over the past few weeks. Before that, there was also the large-scale 2025 “Pokémon Teraleak leak incident,” which dragged in not only game details but also employees’ personal information, prompting follow-up legal action to track down those responsible. Once a confidentiality system has been breached repeatedly, management is only going to get tougher, not looser.

From an industry perspective, planting false internal information to catch moles is nothing unusual, and Nintendo Prime said exactly that. When major companies deal with multilayered collaboration, outsourcing chains, and media testing stages, relying on NDAs alone is nowhere near enough—they have to use information compartmentalization and bait leaks for cross-verification. Simply put, this approach can make leakers go quiet in the short term, but it is very hard to eliminate leaks at the root.

My take is straightforward: this feels more like damage control than a cure. For players, the most practical advice is not to treat any new leak as an official announcement, especially when it involves high-profile projects like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Star Fox—it’s better to wait for Nintendo to speak for itself. Right now, the most interesting thing to watch is not which rumor sounds more exciting, but whether Nintendo’s old playbook can actually catch someone this time.