Even though Tears of the Kingdom is still a couple of weeks away, very revealing leaks are coming forth that might dampen the excitement for the upcoming title. According to VideoGameChronicle, illegal ROMs of the game are apparently in circulation. This has caused a flood of new videos and images of the game to surface, most of which coming from parts of the game that have not been unveiled to the public yet.

Tears of the Kingdom is arguably one of the most anticipated games for the Switch for a while and Nintendo has attempted to keep this anticipation by sprinkling information over a long period of time. Tears of the Kingdom is going to be the largest and most expensive triple A game Nintendo has released for the Switch, so they have put a lot of effort and faith into this product.

This article will not be providing any of the spoilers that have been swarming the internet, though if any viewer wishes to see them, they are apparently not hard to find. One streamer even got away with streaming the first thirty minutes of the game on Twitch before their channel was removed “at the request of the copyright holder.”

It also seems as though physical copy has made it out into the public as well, as displayed by one Twitter user named Pory.

Report 📰🚨:

The Cartridge and Inside of case have been posted for The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom on Mercari. #ZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom pic.twitter.com/2mqbAfN4jY

— Pory (@pory_leeks) May 1, 2023

This is not a completely new problem for Nintendo, as the Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl and Pokémon Legends: Arceus were all leaked about two weeks before their official release date as well. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t even the first Tears of the Kingdom leak. In February of this year, someone posted unreleased artwork from an upcoming book on Discord and Reddit. Nintendo applied to subpoena Discord in order to find out who leaked the images.

With the magnitude of Tears of the Kingdom, unfortunately comes an influx of people trying to get their hands on information early, and it seems to have worked this time. Tears of the Kingdom officially comes out on May 12 for the Nintendo Switch, where there will hopefully still be a massive audience clamoring to play the game legally.