Fans dread spoilers for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as early copies allegedly surface

With the release of Tears of the Kingdom quickly approaching, fans are doing whatever they can to avoid seeing spoilers. Other players are claiming to have access to early copies, sparking anxiety.

Breath of the Wild’s successor, Tears of the Kingdom, is officially releasing on May 12. This leaves fans with less than a month to wait. Many players are spending these last few weeks watching trailers to piece together possible puzzles from the game’s story.

Other fans want to go into the sequel with as little knowledge as possible, with some going as far as avoiding even official footage shown by Nintendo. These players hope to hop into Tears of the Kingdom with a fully fresh mind and little to no knowledge of the game’s contents.

Unfortunately for them, it seems that some lucky gamers have already secured early access to Tears of the Kingdom copies. With photos of supposed inserted cartridges floating around on social media, many Zelda fans are afraid of accidentally stumbling upon spoilers.

Do some players already have Tears of the Kingdom?

Nido, Twitch streamer and Nintendo fan, took to Twitter earlier to post a picture that has Zelda fans worrying over potential spoilers. The photo seems to show someone’s Nintendo Switch with an inserted Tears of the Kingdom cartridge, despite the game’s official release not dropping until May.

He warns fans, stating that they should “prepare for leaks” as this mystery player supposedly has early access to the game. Nido does clarify in following Tweets that the image is not his, meaning that he himself does not yet have Tears of the Kingdom.

While many Zelda fans are worried about encountering spoilers, others are incredibly suspicious of such claims to early access. A few different users on Twitter responded to Nido’s Tweet calling the image “fake,” to which Nido replied by saying it’s real.

Claiming to have confirmed it, Nido does not provide any source to back up the reality of the photo. Whether it’s legit or not remains a mystery, but fans can at least take comfort in the fact that Nintendo will be sure to strike down any pre-release leaks.

The company recently targeted Discord, demanding they give up the user behind the Tears of the Kingdom art book leaks. This was after spending weeks scouring the web for any of the art book’s images, removing them and ensuring fans would not stumble across them easily.