Pokémon Company given permission to obtain identities of Sword & Shield ‘leakers’

The Pokémon Company has been given permission to subpoena the identities of Discord and 4Chan users who allegedly leaked Pokémon Sword and Shield details before release.

If, as expected, The Pokémon Company decide to serve the subpoenas then the two platforms will have no choice but to hand over personal details of the individuals in question.

The lawsuit, which was filed in late November, alleges that the unidentified Discord and 4Chan users“stole trade secrets from TPCi (The Pokémon Company International) by taking illicit pictures of pages from an unreleased strategy guide.”

The defendants are accused of publishing photos of unseen Gigantamax forms, as well as unannounced Pokémon and evolutions, weeks before the official release of Sword and Shield on November 15.

Lawyers claim the leaks caused “irreparable injury” to The Pokémon Company and that it’s “entitled to damages in an amount to be proven at trial.”

The Pokémon Company has so far identified four US-based potential leakers by their Discord names.

Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield combined are Switch’s fastest-selling games to date, according to The Pokémon Company, which claims they surpassed six million sales in their first week of availability.

According to Famitsu sales charts, Sword and Shield had sold 1.74 million copies as of November 24, beating the 1.66 million lifetime sales of Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee.

Sword and Shield is already Japan’s best-selling game of 2019.

Additionally, Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield sold just over two million copies in its first two days in the US, making it the highest-grossing launch of any Pokémon game in the region.

Epic Games recently sued two testers over the leaking of Fortnite Chapter 2 information ahead of its October release.