Nintendo stock tanks on word of game’s ownership

In response to the ubiquity of “Pokemon Go,” investors immediately began snatching up Nintendo stock like, well, Pokemon, probably because the company is most closely associated with the game from its original conception as a cartridge game for Game Boy.

Since July 6, when the game was released in New Zealand and Australia, Nintendo’s stock had jumped an astounding 63.7%, adding about $11 billion to the company’s value, Quartz reported.

In fact, just last Thursday, Ben Collett, head of Asian equities at Sunrise Brokers in Hong Kong, told CNBC that Nintendo’s stock was an attractive buy.

“Nintendo’s going to keep going [up], not just because of the ‘Pokemon Go,’ but because of the whole book they have of characters and extras,” Collett said.

As it turns out, that might not be the case. What most didn’t seem to know was that Nintendo only has about a 32% stake in Pokemon Co., Reuters reported. The game was developed and distributed by Niantic Labs, a mobile gaming startup spun out of Google.

Likely not wanting to face mobs of angry “Pokemon Go” players with several Charizards in their collective back pocket, Nintendo released a statement informing investors of this fact.

In response, Nintendo’s stock immediately plummeted. When the market in Japan closed Monday, the company’s stock was down 17%, or about $6.7 billion.

It was the most dramatic stock price drop Nintendo has experienced since 1990, Bloomberg reported.

In other “Pokemon Go” news, two Canadian teens wandered across the Alberta-Montana border, the U.S. Border Patrol revealed this weekend, while playing Go. So transfixed were the teens in attempting to capture fictional critters, they had no idea they crossed an international boundary.

Border Patrol agents apprehended the pair, and they were reunited with their mother on the other side of the border.