Lessons in leaking

 

There has been a shifting of the balance of video game news since the turn of the century. The power is no longer in the hands of the creators, nor the marketers who own them, but now in the grimy paws of the hackers and leakers and people driven not by passions but something baser and impossible to explain. Is it clout? The potential for profit? The desire to prove oneself as having worth? Or maybe just the spurred desire to watch all the world crumble for your fun and profit? Whatever the situation, we've seen much in the way of projects, in the gaming world, having their debutes marred by early releases, unfinished glimpses and just recently in a turn that feels pretty unprecedented- a complete early game build that people have ran off with and, much as I insinuated, have already managed to get playable. But not everyone is really built to be a victim in this world.

Nintendo are a company renowned for their zero tolerance policy on anything regarding their owned properties, as though they see themselves as the Disney of gaming and must impart similarly draconian measures upon the world. Woe be those who fall under the Nintendo hammer for the crime of, loving their games enough to make a totally original game set within their worlds- yes they've gone after unique fan-made Pokémon games before. They will come down on people with the wrath of the gods if they are caught using ROMS or porting a game to the PC even though Nintendo will never try to cater to that market as long as they live- and we've even heard stories that Nintendo get upset when people play their games totally legitimately but not in the fashion the developers wanted. Let the story of the Nuzlocke challenge which was vetoed by Nintendo never be forgotten. They also hate mods, because of course.

But another company with such a reputation has been the big boys of the development world themselves: Rockstar Games. All the way back during the days when they still visited E3, (we're talking pre 2004) Rockstar suffered the brunt of a leak thanks to engaging with the convention and entrusting one of their builds with said staff. The leak ended up revealing content that was never intended to make it to the final game, but which ended up causing much controversy and getting Rockstar in trouble with certain advisory boards for pushing the boundaries of sexual content. Boundaries, I remind you, that they never actually intended to push in the final game because the whole minigame was just a test build which was ultimately scrapped for whatever reason. Since that moment, like a supervillain origin story, Rockstar became a lot more serious about how they maintained their data.

Rockstar had themselves one of the most profitable franchises in entertainment media, and they realised with that kind of acclaim came a lot of jealous eagerness to step on their image. Rockstar became recluses, locking themselves out from the public discourse of convention shows and gaming news outlets correspondence. They refused to let outsiders in to see what they were working on or even to know about their development practices in even the most abstract sense. Marketing, when deemed absolutely necessary, was handled with the secrecy of a CIA operation. Materials went out earmarked, investigators were on standby if any piece of information went errant, and I can only assume they had secret contracts with black van kidnapping crews just in case they ever needed to go that far. The way we hear former Rockstar executives tell it, they got scary with how they handled the mythos of their company- correctly assuming that premium reputation was tied in with the success they enjoyed so liberally.

Somewhere along the line that bulletproof reputation got lost and disseminated. They grew complacent. Pliable. And then- boom, Grand Theft Auto Six gets leaked. A game that has yet to be officially announced, and certainly hadn't been revealed- was open for the public. And sure, there had been some narrative leaks a few years earlier. We heard details about probable scenarios and characters- but it's easy to brush that aside as idle speculation. Just like when I saw someone summarise the first 3 chapters of Assassin's Creed 3 in the reveal trailer the day that game was announced, they were absolutely right- but I still shrugged it off and the spoiler didn't ruin anything on the day. But when you see hordes of gameplay footage featuring the new playable female protagonist, and the recognisable locales of Vice City, and some of the new mechanics which haven't been officially announced yet and so I won't mention them- that's a bit harder to brush off.

The responsible party, led by a severely autistic hacker armed with an Amazon fire stick, a Hotel TV and a Mobile phone managed to make off with indisputable proof of Grand Theft Auto 6's existence which he spread liberally around the Internet. And no, before you ask- I have no idea how he manged to pull that off with the tools mentioned. (I assume he is a wizard.) Seeing as how I know so much about the lad, however, you can probably predict that the hack did not go so well for him. Whatever grand ideas he had about clout and infamy will unfortunately have to go brushed aside as the lad is served up to the legal system after being hunted down in no time flat. But not by Rockstar's elite recovery team. It seems this leak caught them entirely by surprise, law enforcement had to get involved. The spotless Rockstar doublet got itself tarnished.

Of course, the police did not need to look very far in order to find the hacker, considering he was already in their custody. The kid was already on bail and in Police Protection for the hacking of Nvidia and BT, he did this hack in his free time, which is about the worst time to perform a follow-up you could pick. Originally details on this case made it seem like the prep was on the fast track to a slap on the wrist, but considering the details, as well as the aggrieved party in question- that possibility vanished quick. As of now the boy has been sentenced to life within a Hospital Prison, after being deemed remorseless and dangerous, essentially cutting short all potential the kid had of being covertly recruited by M16 like in the movies... or, maybe providing the perfect cover to discreetly slip him out of the public eye and into M16! (Oh, I may have stumbled onto a fresh conspiracy!)

All this goes to show you that on the otherside of things, there really is nothing at all to be gained from leaking. Even the tiny scraps of attention are often vastly outweighed by the crippling punishments, if not the vast amount of anger you stir up. Remember the amount of disgrace thrown at the guy who leaked the audio of the Cyberpunk 2077 closed doors demo? Now, do you remember his name? Google barely does. And yet we come back here time and time again. So the moral of this little lesson? Don't mess with these big scary companies who care more about asserting their authority than the little people they step on to do it. If they're willing to squeeze their own fans just for liking their games a little too much, just think what they'll do to you!