A hyper-passionate fan base. A notoriously secretive industry. And social media algorithms that encourage people to follow their worst impulses for 15 minutes of fame. It’s a volatile cocktailand one that might explain why infamous leaker who went by the name Midori, lied about being Japanese when in reality he was a disgraced escapee known as MysticDistance many years ago.
Sorry if none of this scanned for you. Let’s go back a bit. Heading into the Summer Game Fest and non-E3 2024 season, rumors swirl about the status of various games, whether they’ll be showing, and what it means when we don’t hear about them, Twitter account MbKKssTBhz5– which came out from Midori – posted all sorts of things with such precise hits that everyone took them seriously.
Midori has built a reputation for being legit after leaking things like this Persona 5 Tactics DLC, Persona 3 Remake“The Answer” DLC.aa Sound Battle Royal party game. But recently, the account has begun branching out into much bolder claims Kingdom Hearts 4 still be several years away after Geoff Keighley confirmed it wouldn’t be at Summer Game Fest, as well as codenames for several secret Nintendo projects, including another one Splatoon game. “Watching Midori after the Nintendo leaks is like watching Icarus step closer to the sun,” one person wrote in a tweet that exploded earlier this month.
But Midori wasn’t just posting reams of apparent insider information about upcoming video game releases from Japanese publishers, the account was also creating the persona of a Japanese woman who engaged with a seemingly mostly male American audience, who ran Discord and wrote in broken English. This was enough some fans are obsessed with Japanese games form a parasocial relationship with Midori, to the point where they tried to calculate her age and asked her for her number.
“Thanks for the friend requests,” Midori published last October. “But I have a boyfriend so I don’t want to date right now. You can make a date Persona games so you can do that instead. I hope you find a great girlfriend soon.” Adding to the mystery surrounding Midori, the character has often talked about getting out of the video game world entirely before finally returning, most recently on Monday of this week.
“It’s just stressful to keep going because of the conspiracies,” Midori he wrote in time, when. “So now I’m uncomfortable. I think it’s a good idea to stop here.” The timing also happened to coincide with several incorrect predictions regarding Square Enix games that appeared at the Xbox show, as well as Vision of mana it won’t be coming to PlayStation 4 (the publisher confirmed earlier today that it would).
Now it turns out that the only real plot was that Midori was a mysterious new woman who escaped from Japan, and not an apparently white man. Persona leaker formerly known as MysticDistance. “The rumors about my identity that have started to spread and will continue to spread recently are correct information,” he said posted on June 13. “It’s just ironic that I’m confirming information that will almost certainly end the long journey we’ve been on with this account.”
The confession was a response to an anonymous document they accuse MysticDistance of faking their new identity and relying on old or incomplete sources to spread new, unsubstantiated rumors. Meanwhile, the attacker was criticized on social media for including racist caricatures to pretend to be someone he was not.
“The Midori persona as it is may not be a real person, but I believe it is an accurate representation of a real person, albeit in a particularly weird way that I wish I didn’t use,” wrote MysticDistance in response. “But it was never used to manipulate someone or make them appear more credible. He denied that the leaks were from old presentations, not contemporary sources, and said that the new account “freed” him to embrace the fan culture of Sega and Atlus leaks in a way that his old MysticDistance reputation did not allow.
“I’m not going to tell anyone what to feel or what I think they should do in this situation. That’s not my place,” he wrote. “I know there are people reading this post who feel betrayed. I will not invalidate your feelings or your decision to leave or express your feelings.” MysticDistance also claimed that his existing leaks would still be proven accurate. “Over the coming months and years, more and more of the unannounced information I’ve released will be revealed,” he continued. “Of course, some plans will probably change as well. I hope everyone is excited about what to expect from Atlus and Sega in the future.”
Midori is just the latest episode in a video game saga about a culture that’s increasingly derailed. As game companies move further away from the first teasers and reveals, and fans of the hottest games become even more desperate for scraps of new information, various escapees tried to fill the gap with varying degrees of success. This is partly because business plans can be complex and constantly evolving. It could also be related to the fact that many supposed leaks got one good piece of information and then couldn’t help but try to use it throughout the identity and Discord community. Midori had indeed flown too close to the sun and now his wings had melted, at least until another one of his older random predictions was proven correct again.
Midori, aka MysticDistance, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.