Tears of the kingdom leak: In just over a week, the leaked copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have caused unprecedented chaos, rivaling Ganon’s havoc-wreaking abilities.
In late April, I discussed the possibility of running Tears of the Kingdom on the Yuzu and Ryujinx Switch emulators with their developers. Initially, it seemed promising. However, the game’s premature leak took everyone by surprise, thrusting both the emulator teams and Nintendo into a tense situation.
To combat piracy, the emulator developers have taken strict measures on their Discord servers. Discussions about running Tears of the Kingdom are limited to vague mentions, promptly deleted if seeking assistance or discussing performance, often leading to warnings or bans. The developers have publicly stated that they won’t release updates addressing Tears of the Kingdom issues until they legally acquire the game. Bunnei, Yuzu’s lead developer, conveyed this stance to me, expressing their anticipation for the official release.
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Nevertheless, those who pirated Tears of the Kingdom two weeks ahead are not inclined to wait patiently.
tears of the kingdom leak: On subreddits like r/NewYuzuPiracy, new “fixes” for the game surface frequently, claiming to enhance performance, fix crashes, or resolve graphical glitches. These “fixes” include a “30 fps patch,” a “60 fps patch,” a “cloudfix,” and other modifications catering to specific issues affecting the official emulator versions of Tears of the Kingdom. These files are shared on hosting sites like Mediafire and Pixeldrain, with each Reddit post providing links to virus scanning sites to prove their cleanliness and absence of trojans or malware that emerged after Tears of the Kingdom leaked on piracy platforms.
The proliferation of memes and conspiracy theories is rampant. Some users panicked when a solution from a now-deleted Reddit account appeared to communicate with an Eastern European remote server, sparking threads like “DELETE THE MODDED EXE!!!” and comical ones like “a large Belarusian man just walked into my house and messed with my wife.”
Fortunately, the Belarus files turned out to be harmless. However, the current Tears of the Kingdom emulation scene lacks reliable information on almost every front.
Emulator development is typically open-source, allowing examination of code changes on platforms like Github. However, without active involvement from the emulator teams, those who pirated the game have taken it upon themselves to modify the code, creating and sharing their own precompiled emulator builds to address various issues. Absent documentation or code history, deciphering the true effects of these “fixes” is challenging unless one has pirated Tears of the Kingdom to personally test them.
