I don't know. From what I can remember, Nintendo has never distributed any sort of digital download code on this kind of scale. The CDs are another story, because you have to produce the CD, produce the casing, package it, and send it on its way until they can email you. It's a physical object, and I should think that that would make it a completely different case.
With the download codes, it's something where all they have to do is generate the codes, put them into a machine, and the machine can copy, paste, and send emails to the customers. It's simple, and I don't think there's anything long about the process. Maybe it's tedious, but I'm fairly certain that it's not lengthy.
Because of the simplicity of sending download codes compared to physical things about CDs, I'm not too worried about this. I feel pretty confident that we'll all get our download codes at pretty much same time.
EDIT: My mistake. --- is right. The Special Demo codes were released in waves. I wasn't a part of that, so I wouldn't know. I apologize.
However, that's still roughly the same time. That's within a few hours or so of each other, maybe a day at the most. Something like that I consider reasonable and can definitely tolerate.
Also, @
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What exactly do you mean by "crackdown"? I'm just curious.