How are people playing BDSP before release?

Question

Self explanatory. Also, If people are playing it before the release date, why don’t we have movesets for the DP Remakes?

Comments

We do have the movesets. https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/brilliant-diamond-shining-pearl-data-dumps.3693375/

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Oh okay. I didn’t see that. But still, how are people playing it before the release?

Answer 1

Some journalists get early copies of the game to play and then review. These reviews are usually semi-controlled by the game developers, so that the journalists don't spoil too much of the game. Some of these journalists have disregarded Game Freak's guidelines and posted what they want. This is illegal, btw.

Also, quite a few people have somehow been able to get their hands on the game early. For example, this Twitter user has been leaking everything BDSP for a while now.

It is always leak season for the two weeks before a big game comes out, because some stupid owners of places like GameStop forget that they're not supposed to sell that game yet.

Comments

Thanks! I was wondering where people were getting that footage of the unreleased games.

Answer 2

Journalists/ reviewers aren't responsible for the "leaked" footage. If they do break their contract, then publishers may not work with them anymore (and in the grand scheme of things, reviewers with permission to play the game make up a very small group of people).

The short answer is that somehow, the game fell into the hands of somebody who knows how to dump the cartridge. It's possible that's because a store broke the street date. From there, once the game is on the internet, it's a matter of time before it ends up with dataminers and somebody who creates a torrent.

The footage you're seeing on Twitter, Reddit, etc. is from people who torrented the game, and are either playing it on an emulator or a Switch running homebrew.