In February, with the game still some three months away from release at the time, someone
posted images on Reddit under the username JustJulienOffic and on Discord as Julien#2743, claiming that a friend had sent them “an interesting look” at its art book.
The book will be included with the Collector’s Edition of the game, and according to the user is “a little over 200 pages” in length.
Those images appear to have been legitimate, and now Nintendo is attempting to find out who ‘Julien’ is so they can take legal action.
TorrentFreak reports that on April 4 Nintendo filed an application for a DMCA subpoena at a district court in California.
The application, if granted, would order Discord “to disclose the identity, including the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), and e-mail addresses(es) of the user Julien#2743, who is responsible for posting infringing content that appeared” on the Discord channel in question.
While the user’s original post has since been removed by Reddit moderators, the deleted images were quickly circulated on social media and other forums.
The images showed concept art of Link and other characters in the game (including some new faces), as well as artwork of some new enemies and locations.
The leak will have been frustrating for Nintendo, which historically has taken great pains to keep the content of its games secret before they’re released.
After a number of delays, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will finally be released on
Nintendo Switch on May 12.
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