The leaker who reported on the existence of a limited-edition Switch themed after The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lost his job for that reveal. The Tears of the Kingdom Switch OLED console went up for pre-orders within 24 hours of its March 28 announcement.
A day ahead of that unveiling, one GameStop employee went online to report that the announcement of a limited-edition Switch OLED is imminent. The Reddit post made by user SecretSantaSeven contained a photo of the retailer's inventory backend system showing a previously unseen stock keeping unit (SKU) number associated with some Switch variant. The author of the image took this to mean that a new console model is coming, with Nintendo officially announcing the Tears of the Kingdom Switch OLED within hours of that prediction.
SecretSantaSeven now revealed that he lost his job on April 11 due to that premature reveal of the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Switch OLED. The leaker said he was initially suspended for violating company policy on April 5 before getting fired a week later. The manager who delivered the news of his termination allegedly told him Nintendo insisted on the firing. In a subsequent interview with Kotaku, the former GameStop employee suggested he wanted to provide fans with a heads-up so that they were able to get their pre-orders in as soon as possible. That's something he himself will now be unable to do due to his firing, according to his latest Reddit update.
The ex-GameStop employee made no attempts to obfuscate his identity online, claiming he was unaware that his act could land him in trouble. He also feels harshly done for this turn of events because his late March post "wasn't even a leak," but "just a hunch," as he put it. The Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Switch leaked for real on several past occasions by the time SecretSantaSeven shared his pre-order prediction, so the contents of his post were hardly surprising for hardcore fans staying on top of the news about the upcoming game.
The former GameStop staffer wasn't even the first to claim that the Tears of the Kingdom Switch will be unveiled in March, although most older rumors on the matter were off the mark by a few weeks. Whether Nintendo's actually to blame for his firing is questionable, not least because sharing SKU numbers is a clear breach of GameStop's policy. According to the retailer's Code of Standards, employees are not allowed to share "proprietary information or any confidential company materials" without prior manager permission.
