Prominent Nintendo leaker locks account, after source ‘revealed as employee’

A prominent Nintendo leaker locked their social media account on Friday, after they revealed that the source of their information was an employee of Nintendo in Japan.

‘Pyoro’ is a well-known social media user who has regularly leaked Nintendo Direct announcements before their official publication. The source of Pyoro’s information was previously secret, but their track record of accurate leaks earned them over 100,000 followers on X.

A new report on popular leakers on Bloomberg, it was noted that Pyoro was uncharacteristically quiet ahead of this week’s Nintendo Direct and that they stated they didn’t expect many big announcements—a claim later proven incorrect when Nintendo showed new Mario, Zelda, and Metroid games.

Several members of the popular Resetera forum then began to realize that, unlike previous Nintendo Directs, this week’s announcements didn’t have pre-seeded webpages on Nintendo’s store.

The users then realised that Pyoro’s previous leaks had all involved games that were set to go live on Nintendo’s website immediately after the live streams, and games that were put on the store after a Nintendo Direct were not leaked by the user.

This led many to conclude that Pyoro had access to Nintendo’s web backend.

In another twist, Bloomberg reached out to Pyoro to ask for clarification. Over direct messages, the user reportedly told Journalist Jason Schreier that their source works for Nintendo in Japan, “but I’m unsure how they obtain their information” and that the “backend theory is a reasonable guess.”

In a since-deleted post, Pyoro then claimed that they did not know their responses to Bloomberg would be included in an article, and they swiftly set their account to private.

Schreier later responded by posting an alleged DM sent to Pyoro prior to publication, stating that he was working on an article.

The alleged revelations around one of the most notorious Nintendo leakers follows another report earlier this month, which claimed that several leaked Nintendo announcements originated from a Google employee who accessed private videos in the Switch maker’s YouTube account.