Thank you for checking out my documentary video on video game leaks! This took months to put together so please consider spreading the word if you liked it. Maybe one day I will do a volume 2 if people like this one enough. For now though, enjoy!
A volume 2 would certainly be exciting to see, given how many games from later generations got leaked online as well. There are so many cases of Switch games getting leaked for instance you could easily fill out a few hours on that alone. Great job with the documentary!
The kid had guts but man I was bashing my head in at the mere stupidity of him accepting the job at MS. Obviously hindsight is 20/20 but he opened himself up to getting caught exponentially because of that employment. The first thing the company would investigate in a robbery would be the employees but even then they would first focus on recent hires. Maybe Microsoft could have identified him off the security footage even had he not taken the job since he lived so close and his mom's boyfriend's cloned credentials could've been linked back to him since it was used in the break in. I will say one thing. An 18 year old breaking into one of the most valuable companies in the world and stealing not one, not two but three dev kits of their biggest product launch at the time is legendary. Maybe that alone was worth the 1 year suspended sentence.
oh my god, that xbox underground story was wild from start to finish. so many twists and turns it might as well be an amusement park ride. well done, brilliant work getting the full story on all this
Man, it really sucks that a kid got their parent fired. Feel bad for the kid for how that conversation at home would've gone, but also pretty bad for the parent, given how shit job searching is.
@@gleam6370I think unfortunately with how extremely secretive the ESRB must be, the Nintendo side of that exchange is also expected to be extremely secretive, so he wasn’t proper fulfilling his job
That’s the type of thing that could theoretically get you blacklisted (untrustworthy), and job loss is often a trigger for divorce. So doing something “goofy” (to the kid) like posting some unreleased content could cause a major shift in the family. I hope it was nothing that serious.
The discovery of developer forums, developer admin accounts at major companies, unfinished games, source codes, hardware builds, military training simulations, a break in at Microsoft headquarters, and the arrest of several people all stemmed from one guy learning the login information of some users on the official Epic Games website. That is one hell of an escalation.
Yup, that's why cybersecurity is so damn important. Multi factor authentication is irritating as a user, but invaluable from a security standpoint, unfortunately. Same principle as airport security, it sucks balls but every incident that that security prevents makes the inconvenience worth it.
Aaaaaand then the Insomniac leak happened a few days later. It's arguably the biggest leak of all time. 10 year plan, playable build, sale figures, budgets, and hell, even employee infos. Very good video, didnt even realize it was a 2 hour video until half way through lol
That whole thing about Halo 4 is very funny to me. I was in high school and working at GameStop around the time Halo 2 was going to release. We had received in some of the steel book cases for the game to show them off to push preorders. One of my classmates was a) very into Halo and b) extremely annoying about it. He would inject himself into people's conversations bragging about how good he was at Halo etc. No one cared but he would persist. So I decided I was going to prank him. I borrowed one of those Halo 2 steel book cases and told a few friends about my plan. I was "secretively" showing off the case for the "GameStop employee preview of Halo 2" to my friends at the lunch table where this guy frequently interrupted conversations. He heard, saw the case, and started losing his mind. Everyone knew I worked at GameStop so this was just as plausible as anything else. My manager and coworkers were kinda in on the joke too cause they knew "Halo kid" as well. This guy begged for months every day to see the game, come to my house and play it, etc. I told him I was under a confidentiality agreement and asked him not to out me to Microsoft about telling people about it 🤣.
I used to be big into Xbox 360 soft modding and hacking and literally EVERY GAME would always leak in full like a month minimum before launch. I never knew why, but now I do haha. I also invited all of my friends to play halo reach at my house before launch. I actuality still have halo reach campaign achievements on my profile that are dated before the launch of the game haha
Sad to hear about the person whose kid leaked the Smash footage; that was some super hype info at the time, but it sucks knowing that they were so swiftly punished for it.
Having the story behind every single of these leaks is crazy 🤯. For me the ESRB leak was a mindblowing thing to happen. My 13 year old mind could not handle the excitement.
This video is wild to me, specifically because I knew Gabe in highschool (we weren't really friends. But was one of my friends friends at the time) and I specifically remember being shown the leak video before it was posted. And then what felt like awhile later our mutual friend running over to me while in school and just screaming "THEY GOT HIM, THEY GOT HIM!" all because Gabe's xbox accounts were all banned and they had found out where he was living. My friend and I at the time thought we all were going to get canned for even knowing about it in the first place. Luckily it turned out quite well for Gabe. I haven't seen him in quite some time but this video gave me a trip to memory lane of the events surrounding that leak.
As someone who doesn't really pay attention to video game leaks, it's insane to me just how deep some of these rabbit holes go. You could make a whole freaking film out of some of these stories.
The craziest leak I can think of that wasn’t covered in this video was one for Smash Ultimate. Something like a month before the final character reveals, someone on 4chan posted (apparently disappointedly) that Ken and Incineroar would be the last characters and Piranha Plant would be the first DLC. Not even one person replied.
Add to that the Craziest Fake leak of all Time the "Grinch leak". Somehow convincing faked marketing material coincidentally aligned with other legit marketing materials to convince 90% of the players that the leak was real. The shock we felt when Incineroar was announced (deconfirming the leak) shock my brain.
Honestly it's probably a good thing that post didn't get traction, the Piranha Plant reveal wouldn't have been nearly as funny if people saw it coming.
Another 4chan leak is that a Disney employee who worked in the licensing office mentioned that Nintendo requested kingdom hearts music for a trailer months before sora was revealed
Absolutely incredible documentary! I recall some of these events over the years, but never really followed them in real-time to know exactly at what extent they got to. Being able to interview some of those involved and hear from them directly was great. The Xbox Underground series of events was particularly fascinating and made my jaw drop at the audacity of it all.
Very quickly and easily my favorite Game History video. Concise yet descriptive on an otherwise muddy and easily misunderstood subject matter. Thanks for the hard work!
The Valve HL2 hacking story never sat right with me. Obviously Gembe was in the wrong, but he's not the one who leaked or stole anything. Newell and Valve's plan to lure him to the US under the false pretense of a job interview, preying on his fear of being conscripted into the army, seems MUCH more wrong to me. I understand Valve's employees were angry, shamed, distracted, and insulted, but that seems like so much of an overreaction, a course driven entirely by emotion and a want for vengeance or justice, the need to punish someone, ANYONE, even if that person wasn't the one entirely responsible. The German judge's belief that Gembe would have received far harsher sentencing if he HAD gone to the US, is somewhat disturbing, especially as a lifelong US citizen myself.
Crazy how a few days of delay by german law enforcement could've resulted in Axel having a vastly different fate than what he actually got. It was morally unethical by Gabe, but can't say I blame him for wanting Axel brought to justice, even if he wasn't the one who actually leaked it.
27:41 At the time of the AC Odyssey leak, I worked at a gaming merch company and we were all shitting ourselves that our product leaked the game. It was a very unnerving time but thankfully it wasn't our studio.
I think Odyssey was after a few years break, but the idea that a leak for a yearly entry could “ruin” anything is funny to me. Yearly releases mean you (the developer) already treat them as disposable because you expect customers to buy them so frequently and move on quickly for the new game. Like “oh no they spoiled our game”, well who cares? You got another one right around the corner you expect people to get excited about, lol.
While Smash character discussion/speculation can get pretty annoying, due to the amount of character requests from fans, I find kind of amusing when an unexpected character gets leaked, because then many fans begin making theories against their supposed inclusion. I remember when the SNK copyright was added to Smash Ultimate description before Terry's reveal, I remember how many fans, mostly from the U.S., started complaining about the possibility of a SNK character being added to the game, as opposed to a more well known, at least for them, character. As someone who grew up playing SNK games like The King of Fighters and Metal Slug, I was kind of sad that so many people in the English-speaking fandom weren't very familiar with SNK's games and didn't want any of their characters to take the spot of a "more deserving" choice. But in the end Terry was added to the game and Sakurai's team added a ton of music and referenced to SNK games, and that made me forgot all of the negativity
Holy cow, you weren't kidding! Not only did they sniff out Microsoft's compromised network but also have the cajones to break in to a building and steal a prototype Xbox! 😂😂😂 I can't even ... This would make one helluva bad ass true crime documentary!
I still remember the Smash 3DS leaked gameplay footage, I couldn't believe there were so many people saying it was fake despite ACTUAL gameplay footage that looked very legit.
Ironically, during the making of this film Rockstar suffered a major hack and reached it's ending when the hacker was arrested recently. At the same time, Insomniac Games was hacked shortly after this video was uploaded. Would like to see coverage on that and the infamous 2011 PS3 hack. Surprised that wasn't mentioned, but that's been highly documented for years on several channels outside this one.
interesting to hear that the origin of the Nintendo gigaleak. the most i had heard was somebody hacked in to a distribution branch of the iQue stuff and there was just a trail that led to the particular data we ended up seeing. but knowing the real deal now, im REALLY surprised what they did manage to get and leak was almost nothing about the N64 stuff other than the iQue console itself and then a bunch of data from the consoles before and after the N64. i recall being hyped for leaked OoT stuff and all we really got of major substance of previously unseen content was an unfinished version of the early Hyrule Castle Town from the outside, which DID give us some perspective of some old images. but then that half rom dump happened and that felt like it was destined to happen after the severe lack of anything from the gigaleak.
You did a phenomenal job at putting together this huge documentary and deep dive at the most wildest leaks I have ever heard. It blows my mind there are people out there doing this sort of thing. And like you said, it is for the thrill but it is baffling to me that it went for so long without consequences until they got arrested. I am legitimately shocked at how deep the rabbit hole was. It almost feels like an iceberg LOL. Anyway, keep up the good work Liam! you did THAT. I'll wait patiently for the next one!
Wish I'd held on to a product survey Electronic Arts had me do once. It wasn't through any typical gaming service, it was through a paid survey program I did that usually sent me surveys about, like, grocery buying habits. But this one involved Electronic Arts, and it revealed a dozen or so screenshots of Dead Space over a year before the game was announced. Early necromorphs looked a lot less human and a lot more goopy. Since it was a paid program, I wanted to keep getting paid, so I saved nothing and told nobody like a good little boy. I think part of the problem was at the time neither "EA" or the name "Dead Space" were referenced in the survey, it was just for "a horror game." It wasn't until I saw Isaac in the Dead Space reveal trailer a year later that I put two and two together. To date, what I saw has never been shown publicly, I think.
I've been nibbling on this video a little bit at a time over the last couple days and having just finished it, wow. The back half of this is so wild. Great, great job.
Amazing doccumentary!!! It has been so interesting knwing how all those historical leaks had came from. As a person who has also felt that rush from knowing or owning something the world has no knowledge from ( as a journalist and preservationist myself) I can very much identify myself with the Xbox leaker gang. The story on how that guy entered microsoft and stole several durango units... that should be made into a movie. Loved the video, great job Liam.
the craziest thing about the mario and rabbids leaks is that nintendo was still willing to work with ubisoft in full confidence after all of that. i mean i guess for that game alone there'd already been so much work poured into it, so scrapping it would've been more work than it was worth, but then they went back for a sequel too? and then star fox in starlink, that was ubisoft too. nintendo is probably the single most secretive company in this industry, and it kind of seems like they didn't bat an eye in this case? it just doesn't make sense, how did they let ubisoft get off scot free??
I guess since it's still profitable so they work it out by agreeing on better security measures, etc. Like, imagine Nintendo blacklisting every partner that has suffered a security breach, it's just impossible, not even themselves can claim to be clean.
Excellent, fascinating video! Thank you for putting it together. It's really interesting getting some insight into how these sorts of things happen, and it is also super chilling to see the extent to which companies will lie to try and ruin the lives of people who they perceive as having wronged them. The story of Valve's leak and the hacker trying to make things right is chilling.
I feel a little bad about the fact Project Keystone died like that. Also, that story about the Halo 4 Devs dropping the hometowns of the XBox Underground was absolutely terrifying. I can only imagine it's worse if you're in a dark hacker room...
I remember going to a local Melee tournament a week or so before Ultimate came out, and there was an Ultimate setup in the corner of the room. As in, someone had Ultimate on their switch with a completed save file (all characters unlocked) and people were playing friendlies on it. I was so confused. Like bro, the game's not even out yet. How tf do you already have it on your Switch?
There is a simple explanation for that. The full game was uploaded to the internet a short while before launch by someone who got their hands on a copy early. Quite a lot of people pirated it and played it on modded Switches before it came out.
What a fantastic documentary! I remember most of these as they happened, and it's very interesting to see how this kind of stuff is pulled off. This is why I follow this channel, because I absolutely love the history and behind the scenes of games (especially Namco's history). I can understand why these folk did what they did. If I had the ability to see unused/scrapped content, I'd probably go nuts, too. Obviously, I wouldn't go the lengths these folks did (mostly because I can't code for squat), but there seems to be the passion and fondness for being able to see and interact with the unavailable that I understand.
It blows my mind how clever these people are that managed to pull some of this stuff off, when listening to how they did it, it sounds like straight out of a movie.
What a sad story, that Axel Gembe, Half Life 2 one. He really thought he was offered a job at a place he'd be amazed to work at, potentially on a series he loved too.. only to be tricked with a fake interview.. Hope he's doing better now!
Respectfully, the documentary is designed to be watched in a linear order. The topics and information are intertwined. Characters, subjects, topics are introduced in one section that recur in others.
@@Jigsaw765 If you skip through it, you will never in a trillion years experience the documentary. You'll think you have experienced it, but you'll be cheated. It's such a sadness, that you think you've seen the documentary using fucking timestamps.
That was such an awesome dive through this world I didn’t knew. So many interesting and unexpectedly dark stories, thank you so much for the documentary, this was a great watch !
Great documentary. As for the closing note, I have heard the term "Social Engineering" used for that aspect. Which makes sense when you realize everything we do for and or to be part of a group, as shown by their interactions.
Great video! You can tell the time and care that went into this vid. Not just the same stories you see recycled again and again on RU-vid. You should be very proud of this one.
I never believed the disgruntled story and knew pixelbutts was telling the truth about it being the result of hack for a batshit reason that I still can't get over to this day that it happen ti me if all people. The basic gist is back in feb of 2020 I was browsing on twitter as you would and at the time I followed a lot of last of us fans. Anyway during my browse, I can across a post from some random fan that feature Ellie and Dina in Seattle. It was same type of build that came with the April leaks, and once I heard about pixelbutts' revelation, I knew for certain that the christen disgruntled thing was 100% not true. So yeah, I was one of the first people that saw the game leak.. pretty nuts.
Pour one out for Insomniac Games. What happened to them recently arguably tops the vast majority if not all the stuff mentioned in this video, and I hope its covered here down the line
at 19:15. "And so the employees from the highly secretive game rating organization did not admit to performing a massive breach of confidentiality to me, a strange man from the internet who could use information like that to ruin their lives, so we're going to believe the ESRB was not involved in this leak at all, trust me guys, they totally said cross their heart and stuff". Edit: At 20:56 well I feel like an idiot now...
Speaking on the smash 3ds leaks it’s amazing that people to this day are still so quick to call something true or false. Especially when it comes to Smash the community speculation is often so off. First there was Sonic and Snake would should have been enough for people to realize anything could happen. Then you had the whole thing with saying Ridley and villager would never work or fit only for them to be added and in proxy the leaks and examples shown in the video about the whole cast. Then you had Cloud and Bayonetta with Cloud being enough on his own as proof that we do not know what’s going to happen or who can or cannot be in smash. AND THEN the crown jewel of Sora being added after YEARS of it being “ImPoșSiBle”. *sigh* And after all that you’re still going to have people say “so and so character” is not possible or would never work and give some “factual” reason as to why. Currently, off the top of my head, the only “rule” that hasn’t been broken is they need to originate from a video game and even so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s eventual broken. With how massive Dragonball Video games are and how important they’ve been to the games industry Goku really isn’t a joke pick anymore
