Weeks before release, Pokémon’s Diamond & Pearl remakes are in the wild

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have seemingly started to make their way into public hands, two weeks before the games’ official release date.

On Saturday one Reddit user claimed to have obtained a North American copy of the game and proceeded to post several pictures and a video of it in action.

If the media is legitimate, it could suggest that The Pokémon Company could be set to suffer yet more game leaks ahead of the release of one of its major Pokémon titles.

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The typically secretive Pokémon Company has suffered from numerous high profile leaks in recent years, which have disrupted its usual strategy of tightly controlling information on its games before their release.

The most high-profile incident occurred last year when Nintendo publicly cut ties with a Portuguese website after it was found to have been behind some pre-launch Pokémon Sword and Shield leaks.

In a statement, website FNintendo admitted it was responsible for uploading a series of off-screen photographs which leaked multiple new and unannounced Pokémon before the official release of Sword and Shield.

In a statement, the website claimed it had severed ties with the reviewer who leaked the Pokémon images, but accepted it would no longer receive products from Nintendo, nor be invited to its events.

In the US, The Pokémon Company sued unidentified individuals over further Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield leaks prior to the game’s release.

In December 2019, TPC was given permission to subpoena the identities of Discord and 4Chan users allegedly behind the leaks, leaving the two platforms no choice but to hand over personal details of the individuals in question. Two men were later ordered to pay $150,000 each to The Pokémon Company for leaking images.

The defendants were 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, 2019.

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were officially announced in February and are remakes of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, which were released on the Nintendo DS in 2006.

The new remakes will be released on Nintendo Switch on November 19.