Copies being sold early have now made their way to pirate sites, hacked Switches and emulators.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is in the wild.
Over the weekend, physical copies of Tears of the Kingdom appear to have gotten into the hands of buyers a full two weeks ahead of the planned May 12 release date. Photos of the Collector’s Edition appeared on 4chan, while at least two copies of the game popped up on online marketplace Mercari. The leak has now escalated to streams across Twitch, Discord and smaller streaming sites, as early players share brief looks at the game before their streams are abruptly taken offline.
PC Gamer has identified what appear to be pirated copies of Tears of the Kingdom on multiple torrent sites by following links from 4chan, shared in a file format consistent with Switch cartridge rips. We can’t confirm that those files are genuine—but given the proliferation of streams, it’s almost certain that the game is already being distributed illegally.
