How Do Major Games Studios Suffer Leaks?
Reading Time: 3 minutesLeaks can be incredibly damaging for video game developers, but how do they happen? Let’s find out.
Stumbling upon new information on a game that isn’t out yet or upcoming features can be truly exciting. There are entire communities built around game leaks.
But how do these game leaks happen to major game studios? You’d assume these larger companies have plenty of strategies to keep content a secret. Read ahead to find out.
What Are Game Leaks?
Video game leaks involve any and all information about a game that’s revealed before the date intended by the game studio. This can include an announcement for new features, a release on different systems, a price cut, new characters, and even the game itself.
While this can be expected for indie titles, which usually have a smaller team of developers and fewer resources to stop hackers and bad actors, it comes as a shock when a major game studio suffers any leaks.
It’s hard to keep information safe, given the wide variety of ways game leaks can take place. Prevention is a big deal, too, since video game leaks can permanently damage game releases. In many cases, the leak comes within the game company from a disgruntled or frustrated developer or employee. This is usually the result of disagreements, crunch, or frustrations with the game’s direction.
Other methods involve hackers or bad actors that find ways around data loss prevention and technical issues like phishing and cookies vulnerabilities, with the GTA 6 leaks being an excellent example of the latter.
The most common game leaks usually involve story decisions and direction, upcoming features, and release dates for various aspects of a game or the game itself.
Intentional Game Leaks: Frustrated Staff
One of the easiest ways game leaks occur is via frustrated or disgruntled staff. This can include employees from middle management, developers, and almost anyone from the various departments in a company. In many cases, it’s developers that decide to leak game content.
A common theme for developers leaking game content involves ‘heavy crunch,’ where the team has longer hours with proportionally less compensation. Releasing game information before its intended release is seen as a way to get back at the company for poor management decisions. Whether justified or not, it seems that this is the most common example of intentional game leaks.
Bad Actors and Hackers
Another way game news reaches public spaces before it should is via bad actors and hackers. There are famous examples of hackers obtaining and sharing game content, including the Rockstar Games hack, as reported by Bleeping Computer, and someone accessing and sharing major plot details for The Last of Us 2, a title from Naughty Dog.
At first, it was believed that the leak came from a disgruntled Naughty Dog employee that was frustrated with their pay. It was later confirmed that hackers came upon a vulnerability in an older Naughty Dog game and gained direct access to the servers.
Any and all info shared with this method is done by third parties that access the content without permission. It seems that this is often done by accessing a game studio’s servers remotely and copying it to a separate system – it’s allegedly rare for a bad actor to visit a game studio to copy the content onto a portable drive.
Accidental Game Leaks
Unintentional leaks might seem silly on the surface, but they’re still detrimental to a game studio’s reputation. These leaks can come from an employee that unknowingly tweets or posts game content without realizing it.
You might also catch developers slipping up and sharing confidential information in an interview. But, there are even examples that involve mishaps in the manufacturing and distribution of merchandise.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, for example, saw some of its merchandise appear online before the game’s announcement. While Ubisoft refused to comment on the image, it appears to have come from an employee involved in the production of the merchandise.
Game Leaks: Worth Ignoring
So, game leaks can come about from disgruntled employees, adept hackers, and even accidentally from the staff on the team, be it on social media or in interviews.
Whatever the case, it’s probably worth it to avoid looking into game leaks. They can ruin your experience when you finally get your hands on the content.
Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-do-major-games-studios-suffer-leaks/
Ref: makeuseof
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