The Biggest Video Game Leaks Ever (Deep Dive)

leaks are an unavoidable reality of the modern video game landscape despite the game industry's obsession with secret keeping piercings of the veil continue to happen and it's these moments that I'll be examining in this video I've been looking back at some of the strangest most significant and in some cases most shocking stories of video game leaks how did these leaks happen who is responsible and what can we learn from the stories behind them I attempted to find out from corporate slip-ups to malicious hacks we're going to explore the wide spectrum of Gaming's biggest leaks and discover just how far some have been willing to go in the pursuit of secret information in this edition of game history [Music] Secrets while being far from the most agous example this video will dissect our first case sits somewhere among the most cited in the pantheon on of bizarre video game leaks Tomb Raider enjoyed a Renaissance of sorts throughout the 2010s starting with the 2013 reboots and continuing with its sequel rise of the Tomb Raider both games attain critical Acclaim and Commercial Success creating expectations for a third installment to build upon the foundations of the first two and close out laurac croft's expanded origin story after rise of the Tomb Raider release in November 2015 Square Enix was understandably quiet on the possibility of sequel fans of the series were not expecting word on a third game for some time to come but less than a year after rise one man's chance encounter with someone involved in its development would pull back the curtain almost two whole years before it would eventually release yeah so I um I live in Montreal uh for uh over about uh would say 10 years now um really passionate about video games has been my my big passion since I time was a teenage uh teenage boy this is tripler 280 a game industry alumnist who previously worked for a major publisher back in 2016 though he was simply a fan of video games and a bystander minding his own business in the city of Montreal Canada on a cold morning in October 2016 tripler was riding the subway to work when something caught his eye I was going to work I was in a Subway uh standing there you know everyone is doing their their their own stuff minding their own business and there was a guy sitting um next to me uh with his laptop open so I was a little bit surprised like okay someone is is working right now are doing stuff and I just looked over my shoulder and um I saw um the guy working on a PowerPoint presentation first thing I saw was shadow of the Tom Raider so straight away in my head I was like shadow of the Tom Raider like I play video games and I was like I don't recall a game called shadow of the Tom Raiders as a fan of the Tomb Raider games tripler was intrigued he attempted to read some of this slideshow open for the whole carage to see and he could just make out some of the details it appeared to be discussing the psychology of video game players knowing that there was a chance he had just stumbled upon an unannounced game he tried to capture the moment to show his friends I just decided to grab my phone but I was so nervous that I just try to take a picture like sneaky um in his haste tripler made off with only one image it was a little blury but the main takeaway the logo for this apparent game was clearly visible he sent it to a couple of friends and then decided it was time to let the internet know he uploaded it to inja and posted it to reddits r/ PS4 board where it quickly gained momentum some were skeptical of his story suggesting it was a joke or maybe even an intentional leak to drummer pipe although the vast majority of posters believed it soon the theory took shape that this was indeed the third game in the Tomb Raider Survivor Trilogy not only that but fans had also worked out that it was likely being made by idos Montreal since tripler had mentioned where the photo was taken in the hours after the post went viral Kotaku followed up on the story and they were able to confirm with their own sources that it was legitimate picking up the Reigns from Crystal Dynamics idas Montreal was the main developer of the next game which was called shadow of the Tomb Raider triplet really had come across confidential internal documents for the next Tomb Raider on his morning commute for a time he feared legal retaliation from the publisher but in the end never heard from them nor did they attempt to get the image pulled yeah after I posted the this uh I I felt really bad I was like oh my God is um he's going to lose his job or you know I was um feeling bad uh about that can can add us or like Crystal Dynamics come back to me and sue me because I leak that or there was a lot of questions and even after six years I'm still wondering like to be honest if it's a good idea to to talk with you to be honest I'm like is there any I'm not really familiar with all the legal stuff it wasn't until over 16 months later in March 28 that the project was officially revealed retaining the title witnessed on the Montreal Subway the game was released on the 14th of September 2018 the shadow of the Tomb Raider leak raised many questions and although it was eventually confirmed to be true some of those still remain today such as the identity of the person triplet encountered and why they were so LAX about exposing confidential material to a carriage full of commuters as we spoke more about the incident we both settled upon a theory as to why this could have happened I guess maybe if the presentation was about I don't know the psychological aspect of video game maybe it's an I don't know an external partner someone who was going to do a presentation maybe someone who is not really familiar with how confidential a game can be I'm pretty sure that you know everyone who works on the video game industry that's the the one the first thing that we uh we tell you is that you know don't start talking about games outside of the job with know people with your uh with your friends or your wife your husband Etc just um keep it to yourself maybe it was an outside consultant you know we kind of speculating but but that would be the type of person who might not have had impressed upon them the importance of Industry secrets you know if you are someone who isn't versed in this world and doesn't understand how important and these trade secrets are then you might slip up and show some on a on a a train yeah exactly across the world it is a common practice for a select number of people at retailers and online stores to receive confidential information about upcoming games for instance a game publisher may choose to inform a store about an unannounced title so they can prepare their internal infrastructure to receive pre-orders and offer information on this new product occasionally accidents have been known to happen where info will mistakenly be published ahead of time preempting an official announcement but rarely have these leaks been as extensive as one which occurred in May 2018 just less than 1 month before E3 2018 was due to take place fans were keeping a close eye out for any potential leaks when Twitter user Wario 64 seemingly hit the Muff Lo scanning for upcoming releases on Walmart Canada's website it Wario 64 had found a myriad of what appeared to be unannounced games listed on their system among these were just coruse 4 Borderlands 3 Lego DC Villains Splinter Cell Gears of War 5 and Rage 2 some made more sense than others indicating that some of the listings contained errors for example forter Horizon 5 was listed when for Horizon 4 had still yet to be announced at the time Dragon Quest 2 was another anomaly which was clearly supposed to have been the then upcoming Dragon Quest Builders to eras like this added a modicum of doubts to what otherwise seemed like a set of genuine leak games which among them were errors and which were titles that truly existed became the subject of much discussion in the days that followed but the general consensus was that Walmart Canada had just kicked off the E3 season with a huge leak Bethesda the publisher behind Rage 2 chose to get ahead of the news later that day and began poking fun at Walmart Canada for the slipper the official rage Twitter account shared an annotated screenshot of the Rage 2 placeholder listing making light of what had happened bethesda's Pete Hines followed up with a tweet of his own saying this is why we can't have nice things as the month of May went on more and more games from the list were officially announced like just cause 4 and Lego DC super villains wiping away any doubts that Walmart Canada had published some genuine information but how exactly did this happen I spoke to Riley little the person behind Walmart Canada's official gaming Twitter account for some more information here's what he had to say I think it was genuinely just an accident after the team had been briefed on the upcoming software it was when there were active E3 pre-order incentives usually some money off and the listings were created and someone who hadn't been informed on why the portals were prepped accidentally set them to go live early as E3 eventually rolled around it became clear that that the vast majority of titles listed were real with a couple of exceptions like Splinter Cell Walmart Canada became the subject of many jokes at the Expo as a result of the incident during bethesda's E3 conference Pete Hines decided to take a few more shots at the store for their mistake so we're starting with a game that we announced a few weeks ago through our friends at Walmart [Applause] Canada perhaps best known for their low prices and ability to keep a secret in the end though it was Walmart Kanda itself that had the last laugh as they were able to leverage the infamous incident as social media fer in the r to rage 2's launch they jokingly advertised an exclusive pre-order bonus sleeve for the game in the style of the placeholder art that had once spoiled its announcement Super Smash Brothers Nintendo's crossover fighting Series has a long and painstakingly documented history of leaks and rumors with so much hype and Intrigue around each entry fans have devoted countless hours to tracking down new information on upcoming games and theorizing about what is to come few of these leaks however can rival the enormity of one which took place in August 2014 at the time fans were anticipating the release of Super Smash Brothers for the Wii U and 3 3DS the 3DS version was due to release first on September 14th 2014 which was only a few weeks away a handful of characters for the game had yet to be revealed at this point which was caused for considerable hype and speculation then on the 19th of August 2014 the leak slowly began to surface a user on 4chan's vboard started a thread which included a collage of all the playable characters confirmed to be featured in the game at the time as well as every other playable character which had appeared in a previous Smash Brothers game they asked the community which of the fighters from previous games did they think would not make the final cut the speculation went on for some hours until later in the day when another user took the original collage image and posted their own edit of it in a new thread the image they posted crossed out a selection of characters from previous games such as snake and Lucas but also added new neverbe seen icons for unannounced Fighters like dark pit and shul Mewtwo on the other hand had a question mark over him while many were dismissive of this initial post fuel would be added to the fire by another poster going under the Alias [ __ ] leaker this person shared two offscreen images of Super Smash Brothers for the 3DS containing unannounced characters the first showed the full render of the Duck Hunt character while the second showed the complete character select screen as time went on some additional images were shared by another poster including looks at the stage select screen and renders for Dr Mario and shul then three other images surfaced on smashboards in the following hours courtesy of a user named masterlink X these showed some more of shul including a shot of the character in game the verocity of these pictures soon became a source of considerable contention among the fan base further adding to the confusion was the fact that master link X the third Source admitted to doctoring their images for instance they edited shul using a render from Zen Chronicles and changed the wireless disabled text to say disabl rather than disabled they did this to so doubt among the community as to how real the images were i c up with masterlink Y later who offered this explanation quote I was going to photoshop the images here and there and shared them publicly once they eventually started leaking as they did why do this I was bored and thought it would have been funny to see people start seeing different versions of images and start questioning what the hell was going on this stuff started leaking publicly faster than I was expecting so I never really got to photoshop more of the images before they were all posted by the forchan user in the immediate aftermath of these leaks the debate over their authenticity raged on across forums and social media with the vast majority of people believing it was all a hoax one Battleground for the discourse was game Fact where users were pulled after the initial leaks and voted mostly against it being real out of 158 people 49 voted no and 44 voted leaning no just nine people said that they believed it completely over on neoa there was a similar level of Doubt level towards the leaks to show you some examples if this is real then there's no way it's the final roster there's some spawn what I know Sakurai and his wife would never accept as UI designers are people seriously contemplating that this might be real what is wrong with you this is obviously fake for me you guys are fooled easily I don't know why but I'm genuinely frustrated that so many people are falling for this guys this leak is so obviously fake how would they even make an amiibo of duck hunt it's obviously fake because of that alone reasons for believing the images were inauthentic varied for example some believe that the character select screen shown couldn't be real because it sported some key differences from the version of it shown at e324 months earlier another popular recurring Theory suggested that the design of shul was forged using the previously revealed render for little Mark some even attempted to Overlay the two designs to prove their point which would later become a point of ridicule and an Infamous meme in the community much of the doubt would be quelled however on the 25th of August 2014 when a series of videos was uploaded to YouTube by a user named is that true whereas the still images posted previously were commonly dismissed as fake even the most Oden Skeptics struggle to explain away these videos that showed the game in motion the unannounced characters previously shown in other posts like Bowser junor could now be seen in these off- camera recordings of in-game footage this represented a turning point for the smash Community as a lot more fans became convinced that this outpouring of leaks was legitimate although a good amount of people remained unconvinced some touted the theory that this was a mod of Super Smash Brother's Brawl for the Wii made solely for the purpose of orchestrating an elaborate ruse as the day went on and the games press began covering the leagues Nintendo of America took action and removed the videos all but confirming their authenticity the final nail in the coffin was delivered several days later on August 29th when a Japanese Nintendo Direct ad which opened with a trailer officially revealing schul for the game his look animations and move set were identical to those seen in the leaked material putting the matter largely to rest all told the series of images and videos leaked a whopping total of eight unannounced Fighters for the game along with stages trophies and over details this was a breach of confidential material on a scale that had never been seen before in the history of the series so how did this Monumental leak occur over the years there have been plenty of rumors and theories without a definitive answer I decided to look into it the most common formation made about the leaks at the time was that they had some connection to America's content rating board the ESRB this is due to the players 3DS username seen in the leaked material which was ESRB 0083 it is widely known that that the ESRB views pre-release content like this as games are being prepared for launch Publishers can use this opportunity to negotiate changes to their games to obtain lower age ratings and seek advice from them on how to do so among the Bevy of leaked material was some content that didn't make it into the final game such as a trophy for fire emblems ther who is sporting some fairly revealing attire this has been cited in the past as further evidence to suggest these images had some kind of connection to the ESRB it has therefore become commonly referred to as the ESRB leak but how deserved is this monac I spoke to several former ESRB employees who worked there at the time the leaks took place including people who oversaw Nintendo games to gain insight into whether or not these could have originated from the organization the consensus among them was that this couldn't have possibly come from the ESRB itself the ESRB I was told employs very high levels of security when testing or viewing content from unreleased games all content is viewed in a tightly controlled environment where no phones over recording devices are permitted testers Within These facilities are monitored at all times by security personnel and no testers are allowed to leave the room with the unreleased content in some cases Publishers even send their own security staff to transport This Confidential material in secured containers in other words it wouldn't have been possible for someone at the ESRB to take material from Smash Brother 3DS into a quiet dark room and capture it on a phone with that established I spoke to former employees from Nintendo of America including some who had worked on Super Smash Brothers for 3DS Nintendo of America employee staff who are responsible for capturing videos from their games for the ESRB to evaluate it is common for the ESRB to review footage of in development games sent by Publishers as opposed to playing them firsthand a couple of work were doubtful that the footage could have been filmed inside Nintendo's offices themselves but I eventually found developers who recalled this specific incident and had knowledge of how it happened according to them the leaks were connected to a Nintendo of America employee whose duties included localization and ESRB compliance although they were not the person responsible for posting the content on the internet it was actually a child of this Nintendo employee who apparently gained access to the material through a personal device the exact nature of how this was accomplished is unclear but one for must Stafa believed that they could have access Nintendo's internet using a device belonging to their parent without their knowledge they then recorded the off-screen footage and took pictures on a phone at home this explains why they were able to do so in a dark quiet room unnoticed as well as the appearance of the footage seen in the video we can see that it is clearly not being played on a retail 3DS as there is no gap between the top and bottom screens former workers say that the footage was originally captured using Nintendo's proprietary capture technology partner CTR we were all shocked to hear about the news of the leak when it happened one source told me they alleged that Nintendo was quick to trace the source of the leak back to the employee involved and they were soon fired after all they would have been able to see who accessed which files on their internet were that the case and the ESRB number seen in the footage could have also helped however this still more to the story than that although the child of this X Nintendo employee was allegedly responsible for it originally escaping the company they do not appear to have been the person who posted the content to forchan in actuality what appears to have happened is that they obtained the material for a small group of online friends in the middle of August 2014 the original leaker shared their discoveries with this tight-knit circle of Smash die hards under the Proviso they would not share it with the rest of the world first the images and then later the videos but the secret was too big for some to keep they slightly shared it with a couple of their friends they did the same until it reached someone who couldn't be trusted to keep it quiet not long after this those initial icons emerged on forchan and other people with access to more of the images decided that the pack of secrecy had expired and posted what they had this wasn't a rogue Nintendo employees seeking internet points these were the actions of a F who was enabl to wait a few weeks for the official release and leaked it to their online buddies at the expense of their parents' career and Nintendo's marketing plans most big video game companies imply reasonably high levels of security to keep their work Under Wraps CCTV cameras biometric locks on doors sometimes even guards but if you ever wondered what would happen if someone just tried walking into one of these places well in 2015 that is exactly what happened to a studio in Ontario Canada digital extremes is the developer behind the online multiplayer action game Warframe at the time of the incident the company was also early into development on a top secret new IP alongside content for Warframe no information about this project had made its way online until the headquarters was paid a visit by an Uninvited Guest in June 2015 a fan of digital extremes decided that they would travel to their building in London Ontario and attempt to enter it after taking some time to pinpoint the exact location of the studio the person in question I to study of a Warframe character in an office window they then scoped out the entrance before noticing that it was locked with a fingerprint scanner but that didn't stop them they waited for a digital extremes worker to unlock the door and then followed in behind them this person then walked through the building and found a place to sit down Al ating chairs every so often in an attempt to appear busy as they observe the working day around them none of the company's actual employees questioned them it was assumed since they were in the building that they had a valid reason for being there and with the company employing hundreds of people new faces were not uncommon after spending some time there throughout the morning the Intruder Then followed a group of employees lining up at midday for lunch they grabbed themselves a plate and enjoyed a free buffet lunch courtesy of digital extremes the impostor sat and ate their food with a friendly group of developers and listened as they described an unannounced project they were working on it was a multiplayer firstperson shooter with card game elements that was code named Keystone after this the individual continued wandering the offices and hung around for about six more hours recounting the experience at a later date they said quote the QA room has Funko figures and stuffed animals everywhere there were a lot of PS4 and Xbox one sitting around unattended there were no security guards and no one asked me who I was they just assumed I belonged there and told me about their secret game at 600 p.m. they noticed people leaving and followed them out once again blending into the crowd this person had just spent the whole day trespassing inside their offices and digital extremes was none the wiser that was until a thread appeared on the subreddit for Warframe relaying the details of the incident and revealing project Keystone the company's secret was now out in the open it was posted by an anonymous user calling themselves undercover Legend Who clearly expected the story to be received much more positively than it actually was at first a lot of people didn't believe them and the few that did labeled the act as creepy it wasn't until the post was removed for privacy reasons and Kaku verified the story independently that it became clear they were telling the truth one day later their Community manager discussed the debacle on the official Warframe forums quote a recent claim from a fan circulating the web alleges he or she spent a day with us Incognito while Canadians are known for being welcoming and polite we employ over 200 passionate Gamers committed to delivering Kick-Ass games like Warframe and sword Coast Legends and while we're flattered someone would want to spend a day with all of us please respect our privacy and know that like any business would we completely discourage any and all unlawful attempts to enter our relay we love our tenno but let's be respectful and law- abiding trespassing is never okay in the aftermath of the statement undercover Legend deleted their account and went quiet on the matter having failed completely to Garner their desired reaction they did not however face any litigation as a result of their actions two years after the incident took place the aformentioned project Keystone was officially announced as the amazing attorney a closed beta was held in late August 2017 before it was cancelled months later due to lack of interest and to refocus resources into developing for Warframe Ubisoft has something of a reputation for being less than airtight when it comes to leaks the Assassin's Creed games are a good example of this frequently being subject to breaches and confidentiality over the years honorable mentions to the time Assassin's Creed Black Flag was spotted by a redditor on the laptop of a Ubisoft employee aboard a commercial airplane when Assassin's Creed Origins was leaked via a t-shirt or how the reveal of Assassin's Creed Odyssey was spoiled by a key ring for this section though I'll instead be focusing on a Ubisoft project that ended up being arguably one of the most leaked Nintendo switch games ever and it's one that I personally reported on as it happened Mario plus Rabbids Kingdom battle this game stands out for the the sheer breath of material that was leaked in the runup to its reveal everything from QA notes to internal marketing documents Spilled Out before it was even officially announced some of the earliest recorded Whispers of the project that I was able to find date back to October 2016 French newssite gameblog dfr posted a series of rumors about Nintendo's next console the switch which was code named NX at the time among the various topics touched upon they briefly made mention of a Yoshi and Rabbids crossover game that was being discussed at Ubisoft the first person to report on the rumors more thoroughly however was game journalist Laura Kate Dale who released a report on let's go video games about a Mario robits Crossover in development her sources said that it was a turn-based RPG with the working title Mario RPG invasion of the rabids that was due to release alongside the switch day one they claimed it would feature the Mario Universe being invaded by the rabbits some friendly and some Foe and would feature a new Bowser form based around the design of the Rabbids as a recurring boss several days later I shared my thoughts on the story on a podcast um Lord K seems to be more convinced that it will be um like a a conventional RPG she said that one of the rumored names of it was was literally Mario RPG and I'm not so sure about that I've personally heard that it was more of like a tactical strategy RPG similar to like X comma Fire Emblem over the course of the next 2 months more and more information began leaking behind the scenes and in January 2017 I took to Twitter to share some more of what I'd been hearing I don't know what the title is there was a Reuben name a little while back that had Mushroom Kingdom battle in the title I think it's set in the Mushroom Kingdom and the rabbit's Dimension is sort of invading it most of the enemies are evil SL warped rabbits it does feature Mario and various other main series serous characters Nintendo has apparently been very controlling of how they are used there are also Rabbids themed around various Mario characters like Mario and Luigi costumed Rabbids that sort of thing for the following few months Ubisoft sources continued to talk about the game in more and more detail by April I had a comprehensive understanding of the gameplay mechanics story and structure on May 1st 2017 I released a new podcast discussing more about the project with my co-host Dan Thomas there's like stats for each weapon you know lots of different weapons there is a skill tree system that underpins the game wow uh which sounds very Ubisoft I wonder what the weapons are then all I could think of is like a plunger for like the Rabbids and that's like no I think it's like guns and stuff like that I think like really like arm cannons and those kind of Nintendo weapons yeah I mean I I haven't really seen any of the weapons myself but um someone I was speaking to was saying like there are a lot of weapons they have a big they they're maintaining a massive spreadsheet with all of the different weapons on there which sort of makes it sound a bit like KCK orous Uprising it was just one day later that I received the first image I ever saw from the game a lowquality offscreen picture of a logo spotted somewhere inside Ubisoft it was so nondescript that even though the same Source had provided a lot of over information I wasn't sure it was even real a part of me consider Ed if this was an elaborate joke however that concern would be quickly dispensed with as the leaks continued that month actual internal documents from Ubisoft began to be circulated behind the scenes including key Arts prototype screenshots and info from quality assurance tests among the leaked documents was a slideshow from an internal marketing presentation detailing everything from the characters and the structure of the game to the planned roll out which ironically included the phrase surprise that announcement from my perspective I thought that some of these documents appeared so sensitive that releasing them outright posed all kinds of complications the closest thing I did to disclosing anything was that I took a Mario render from the project crudely added some sunglasses to it and made it my profile picture on Twitter in early May nobody noticed this until I pointed it out much later with the exception of one person media personality John cartright who had access to the same image I would estimate that dozens of people had access to this content so it felt like it was only a matter of time before someone would release it I had been quietly waiting for either that to happen or for Ubisoft to announce the game themselves when on May 23rd 2017 what little secrecy remained was done away with I was alerted to the fact that someone had been cropping pieces of the Project's keyart and posting it on a Discord server for video game news then people had been taking these images and sharing them on Twitter including one containing the Rabid Peach character although the original tweet was hastily deleted it was quickly reposted by user named fatal flowey this was the first time The Wider public got their eyes on material from the project I reported on the story and posted the full keyot that was being teased by overs confirming its authenticity in an article for wwg shortly thereafter Nintendo World Report followed by releasing images of that internal Ubisoft slideshow presentation on the game this included more Arts character information and more it was a massive outing of the game weeks before it was said to be revealed that dispelled any doubt that this unlikely project was real nearly 3 weeks later on June 12th 2017 it was finally announced officially at a Ubisoft E3 conference Mario creator shagura mamoto joined Ubisoft president Eve gimo for the reveal in front of the Kei that had leaked weeks earlier despite some initial apprehension it was broadly well received and the game went on to be very successful but it's worth asking why did the leaks happen the answer is not as straightforward as some other cases I was told that Ubisoft did carry out an internal investigation into the leaks however there was no single cause or inciting incident a lot was leaked and from many different people I believe that it has something to do with the problematic workplace culture at Ubisoft which myself and many others have heard a lot about over the years in 2020 roft commissioned a study from an independent research firm to examine the state of the company following reports of rampant sexism harassment misconduct and other problems a staggering 25% of their entire Workforce who responded to this survey reported witnessing or experiencing misconduct firsthand furthermore one in five workers indicated that they didn't feel safe or respected in the work environment in my experience companies that don't respect their Workforce are more prone to leaks workers who've had bad experiences or on top you of the direction their company is going in are less incentivized to keep their secrets I do think that one big aspect at play as well is the sheer size of Ubisoft with a game like Mario rabbits for example hundreds of people worked on it across multiple branches around the world the more people in on a secret like that the harder it is to keep although I do think there is something to be said for how disproportionately a company like Ubisoft has been impacted by leaks given its extensive history of allegations and the poor reputation of its workplace culture in 2003 valve was deepen into development on halflife 2 the sequel to its acclaimed 1998 firstperson shooter it had been in the works for several years at this point with a release set for September of that year an ambitious demo showcased at E3 2003 cemented it as one of the most anticipated games of the year in real reality though it was far from finished despite the team enduring extensive crunch throughout the summer of 2003 valve was staring down the likelihood that the game would have to be delayed significantly but at the same time they were being less than transparent with the Press about its status valve re assured the media that it was set for September 30th 2003 and kept telling them that as late as one week before that date it wasn't until September 23rd that Val finally came forward to confirm that the game was being delayed to late 2003 a sudden turnaround which upset a lot of fans while valve was fending off this Public Relation storm another much more serious one was brewing on the horizon on the night of October 1st 2003 Val discovered that an internal email sent between their employees had been posted online it was found on the forums of a video game Clan named myot which was Notorious for provoking people of hacking tools in multiplayer games like Counterstrike this leaked email tipped valve off to the fact that their internal systems had been compromised as time went on the extent of that compromise became clear as valve secrets were splashed across the Internet passwords for internal valve accounts were floating around but this was quickly overshadowed by a much bigger Discovery halflife 2 source code had been leaked Not only was this a massive breach of their security the leak laid bare how unfinished halflife 2 truly was a fact valve could now no longer hide the source code was posted by an individual calling himself Osama bin leer who pulled no punches in his assessment of the situation claiming valve had faked its much hyped E3 demo earlier in the a in the immediate aftermath the company faced a torrent of abuse and criticism from fans who now accus them of deception hours after the leaks began valve CEO Gabe Newell sprang into action he first contacted the FBI telling them that he believed his Studio had been hacked and that many millions of dollars worth of code had been stolen then he posted to the official halflife 2 forums where he confirmed for the first time that the leaks were real and asked the community for their help in unmasking those responsible quote ever have one of those weeks this has just not been the best couple of days for me or for valve yes the source code that has been posted is the hl2 source code an extensive investigation into the incident was launched at valve in cooperation with the FBI forensic analysis revealed that 13 different computers had been compromised with key loggers inosan horses despite the many theories that emerged about the Culp rates as the months went by investigators failed to come up with anything concrete the only solid lead had been turned up not by federal agents but by a member of the half-life Community who emailed valve claiming to know who was behind the attack they submitted chat logs in which a user called ago shared sensitive security information from inside valve such as Gabe newel's personal username and password although this was not investigated furor at the time meanwhile the leaks had wreaked an Untold amount of financial damage upon the company according to FBI documents from the time the unfinished game had been burned to CDs and sold throughout countries like Russia given this and the game being readily available for people to download valve told the FBI that they estimated as much as a quarter of a billion dollars had been lost in sales this figure was an exaggeration it assumed that nobody with the leaked version would buy their eventual finished product but it gives you an idea of the value valve was placing on their intellectual property there was one silver lining for them in the affair and that was being able to blame the hackings for halflife 2 being late on the 7th of October 2003 vendi confirmed to the press that the game would be delayed until 2004 and pointed to the leak as the sole reason why the hacks did cause all manner of hardships at the company money was lost morale plummeted and it was an unwelcome destruction that pulled staff away from making the game in a way though it also shielded valve from criticism that the project was taking too long and that they hadn't been forthcoming about their progress as time went on the team continued work on the game and Gabe Newell did his best to reassure them reportedly saying in one meeting we've made it through all this how much worse can it get the leaks had stopped for the time being but gabes brush with the culprit was far from Over the FBI investigation into the events had made little progress when on the 15th of February 2004 new received an email from the hacker himself it had been sent from an encrypted email address dagy hush.com used to maintain his anonymity in the message dgy claimed responsibility for hacking valve but said he was not the person who leaked the game The Man Behind the dye Persona was Axel gambe a 21-year-old valve Enthusiast from Germany who went by the online Alias ago the same person that summon the community had been raising alarm Bells about months earlier he had acted alone in his intrusion into their Network and had been quietly snooping around inside it for 6 months prior to the Leakes in around April of 2003 Axel had grown tired of the wait for halflife 2 and decided that he would try to learn more about the project on his own terms he was a proficient hacker and programmer who had in the past authored and sold his own malware such as agoot a family of computer worms G found his entry point into Dev valve through another business being run out of the same building called tangis a wearable technology company which was operated by Dan Newell a relative of Gabe Newell Axel hacked into an unsecured account on the official Tang his website and then used software he had written to exploit its server tricking it into raising the privileges on his account he found that the firewalls and valve servers had a trust relationship with tangis that meant someone with access to tangis could interact with valve's internal Network he used this knowledge to scan valve's Network until he found an account on it with no password he entered this account and then used a cracking tool to extract usernames and passwords from Val's Network from there he was eventually able to locate the server with halflife 2's data on it and monitor the Project's progress he installed a rot Kate on valve server enabling him to mask his presence which it successfully did for around half a year he went on to extract code assets and other data to observe but he apparently declined to leak any of it according to Axel GBE his motivations were not outwardly malicious he was simply a passionate halflife fan with an insatiable curiosity about the new game months later however he slipped up after keeping his access to valve's network secret for several months he shared the news with a friend over an Internet relay chart in September 2003 gambay supposedly thought that his conversation was being held in confidence but Days Later someone used the information he divulged in this chart to break and EV valves Network themselves GBE believed that the owners of the IRC which had some association with the mot tring Clan were responsible either they EES dropped on his conversation or the person he sent this information to shared it with them later against his wishes on September 19th 2003 someone stole the source code for halflife 2 and infected valve's computers with malware and keystroke logos less than 2 weeks later the stolen material surfaced online GBE then reached out to valve's head in February 2014 where he anonymously confessed to infiltrating his company and passed on who he believed had purb Tred the leak he provided details of the hack to prove his legitimacy and apologized for the outcome of his actions quote hello Gabe I'm very sorry about what happened with hl2 I wanted to help you people get to know the truth by writing this mail and I never intended to harm you I only didn't tell you I was in your network cuz I was afraid to get kicked out I just wanted to observe the halflife 2 development process cuz I'm a hobby developer myself and a big fan of halflife 2 let's just say I'm Amazed by the capabilities of your team after some initial disbelief on Gabe new's part GBE eventually convinced Val's president that he was the person responsible for the hacking and over the following weeks the two shared a fairly amicable exchange on the surface of it by the 19th of February 2004 GBE became comfortable enough talking with newel that he floated the idea of being given a job at valve initially new will believed this could have been a joke before for GBE clarified that he was entirely serious he went on to explain that he wanted to leave his country out of concern he would be conscripted into the military military service was compulsory in Germany at the time for ages 18 to 27 Newell who was working with the FBI to catch Axel GBE entertained his request quote you certainly impressed us with your skills we've hired a lot of people from the community and I guess in a funny way this would be more of the same the two continued talking intending to set up a job interview towards the end of February 2004 n's responses became less frequent as he was busy negotiating valve's plans for E3 with Microsoft early into March 2004 GBE expressed his impatience with the pace of new's Correspondence n apologized saying I'll try to be more prompt in my replies days later however new's replies were still not coming fast enough for game's liking and he responded with a veil threat may I ask what your definition of prompt is if my intents weren't to clear this thing up I could have already taken over your FTP server over the following weeks gamb advised valve on other potential vulnerabilities in their security and the two finally set up a job interview it wasn't real of course valve and the FBI aimed to solicit identifying information from GBE and possibly even lure him to the United States for prosecution the interview was conducted over the phone by Valve developers Greg Kumer and Matt bamburger after Greg kummer commented how unusual it was to hold an interview without knowing the name of the interviewee GBE shared his [ __ ] persona for the first time volunteering his full name and country of origin over the course of the conversation he disclosed in-depth technical details on how he encroached into valve's Network eventually the employees thanked him and proposed that he should fly to the US for an in-person interview with all expenses covered by Valve the investigators on the case used the information they obtained from this call such as his phone number to locate gbe's Home in Germany and alerted the German authorities while GBE prepared for his trip to the US the Germans spent a few weeks obtaining an arrest warrant early in the morning of May 7th 2004 Axel GBE awoke to find himself surrounded by German police officers pointing automatic weapons at his head he was told to get up get dressed and come with them down to the local police station there he was interrogated for 3 hours about the incident although the police were apparently more concerned with investigating sassa a computer worm written by another German hacker who authorities mistakenly believed GBE could have been colluding with he repeated this and other claims apparently telling them quote I never write such shoddy code he was held in custody for the following two weeks before being released pending trial and had a check in with the police three times a week until then in November 2006 his day in court finally arrived the trial concluded that while he had hacked valve there was no evidence to suggest he was the one responsible for disseminating halflife 2 he was therefore given a 2-year suspended sentence and spared jail time the judge took into account gbe's difficult childhood including that he had been abandoned by his mother and the steps he had taken to improve his life since his arrest he had completed an apprenticeship and in September 2004 gained employment as a programmer German police told him that had valve succeeded in luring him to the US he likely would have faced a far more severe sentence halflife 2 was released to rave reviews and huge commercial success in November 2004 the leaked build was taken from over a year before it was finished in the years since Axel GBE has expressed his regret over the affair and apologized to vve publicly in 2014 he spoke with Eurogamer where he addressed Gabe newel personally quote I am so very sorry for what I did to you I never intended to cause you harm if I couldn't do it I would it still makes me sad thinking about it I would have loved to just stay and watch you do your thing but in the end I screwed it up you are my favorite developer and I will always buy your games gamb story has since become regarded as one of the most infamous leaks in video game history and he has remained a divisive figure among the halflife fan base so I'm ha him as a hero for his role in releasing in development content over still criticize him for hindering halflife 2's creation either way he would be far from the last person involved in hacking Whose actions would result in a high-profile video game leak in the past I have extensively chronicled the troubled development of Dead Rising 4 One facet of its history that we've yet to explore however is how the game leaked online weeks before it was announced the inside story of the Dead Rising 4 leaks has never before been told but it's one that snowboards into federal law enforcement getting involved the person responsible for disclosing material of the game early was a man from the United States known in Enthusiast circles for obtaining and releasing video game prototypes this individual who goes by the online handle pixel buts gained some notoriety in January 2016 for dumping an in development prototype of the cancelled Star Wars Battlefront 3 game by free radical I spoke to the man in question years later to learn more about what happened pixel buts was a prominent member of assembler games a forum that was commonly used to trade prototypes and share information on unreleased games he had developed a reputation there both for his releases and for providing mirrors to various prototypes dumped by others while it's true that the act of uploading these prototypes could be deemed copyright infringement it's rare for companies to actually pursue individuals for doing so especially when they're from a defunct Studio like free radical after unleashing the Battlefront prototype onto the web in early 2016 pixel initially feared incurring a legal response from the Star Wars right told as Disney but nothing ever came of it the lack of consequences for this release he told me emboldened him to leak more months later in May 2016 pixel was contacted by a user on assembler games who offered to send him a selection of prototypes to back up among these were pre-release builds of games like 2013's Tomb Raider Mighty number nine the4 and the cancelled sequel to blur by bizarre Creations there was also a prototype of a game that wasn't even publicly known to exist at the time Dead Rising 4 the project was actively in development at capcom's Vancouver studio and had yet to be announced pixel saved what he was able to with the data passed on to him before turning his attention to what was an in development PC build of the new Dead Rising sequel it took two whole days for the prototype to finish downloading but he eventually opened opened it up just barely able to run it on his lows speec computer before people outside of Microsoft and Capcom had even learned of its existence pixel was playing through Dead Rising 4 in the comfort of his own home had he decided to stay quiet about his Discovery it's unlikely that he would have faced any repercussions for accessing the game early but he instead chose to share it with the world taking the four chance v-board pixel started by sharing screenshots of Mighty number n throughout May 2016 while the game was still a month out from launch then he began dropping hints that he had access to the next Dead rizing game to the confusion of some posters on the 6th of June 2016 he finally decided to back up his claims by releasing pictures of Dead Rising 4 on forchan which had been taken offscreen using his phone over the following hours pixel shared his thoughts on the Prototype and continued uploading more images including direct in-game screenshots the game was officially announced during Microsoft soft's 2016 E3 press conference on June 12th but that didn't deter pixel from disclosing even more images and information in the days that followed he even hosted his own Q&A Fielding questions about its gameplay story and more a few weeks passed and pixel buts believed he'd gotten off scott free for the leaks until he received a cease and assist notice from Capcom threatening legal action if he continued the letter finally put a stop to his posts although much bigger problems were in store for the leer later that month on July 28th 2016 the US Department of Justice showed up at his house with a search warrant officers entered and seized the computers he had used to run the unreleased games Pixel read through the details of the warrant and it was then that he realized the extent of his troubles and why the government had tracked him down it was all related to the origins of the prototypes he had received back in May from a user on assembl games as it turned out the Prototype builds he was sent were the outcome of an international hacking Scandal months before first making contact with pixel the user had remotely hacked into the Polish branch of a quality assurance company named testronic Labs companies like these are commonly employed by larger developers to Outsource QA work the individual had allegedly exploited a vulnerability in a security camera testronic using this to gain access to their Network and stealing a full terabyte of data this includes Ed files from countless unreleased projects like Dead Rising 4 pixel believed that he was sent only a fraction of the total amount stolen from testronic but his connection to the affair now had him facing a felony had he kept his head down like others who handled the data he could have avoided charges because it was actually the distribution of the stolen material on forchan particularly relating the Dead Rising 4 that brought law enforcement to his door he was charged with stealing Trade Secrets and for knowingly accepting stolen property the latter charge was eventually dropped when it became clear he hadn't known the data was stolen despite having his computer seized he continued to update forchan intermittently on his turbulent situation in August 2016 he posted waiting to get my computers back sucks man don't [ __ ] up pixel was ultimately subject to 200 hours of community service 3 years of formal probation and $20,000 bail which was lowered to ,700 with Bail Bonds The Experience he told me left him regretful for his actions and reconsidering how he would handle prototypes in the future quote my record was later lowered to a misdemeanor and expunged but in my mind I still couldn't shake what happened a pretty big wakeup call for me I wasn't Invincible I definitely did it to myself and earned it so I owned my mistake and it ended up making my sentencing less severe in the end even though it guaranteed I got some punishment years later pixel buts Remains the the only person to a face criminal charges as a result of the incident even the original hacker has evaded law enforcement despite this pixel was able to have his record expunged and eventually found a job working in the games industry doing quality assurance no less his story is a reminder of how seriously larger companies can take leaks and the dangers of handling material of dubious origin to say that there was hype Around The Last of Us Part Two in the runup to launch would be putting it lightly here was the sequel to one of the most critically lorded games of its generation with over five years in development and aside from a few tantalizing trailers details about the Direction the Story would take were still tightly Under Wraps the game was initially set to launch on May 29th 2020 but was delayed indefinitely on the 2nd of April that year while it was on the verge of being finished the events of 2020 posed significant logistical issues that made shipping it on its original schedule no longer possible however it was just one day later that developer naughty dog's carefully curated bubble of secrecy began to show cracks a series of short prototype gameplay clips surfaced on YouTube which showed some more of the game among these were shots of the protagonist Ellie riding a horse and a guar mini game Sony acted quickly copyright striking the videos within about 10 minutes of them being uploaded rumors about the game's narrative would make the rounds on Reddit in the following days but but it was on the 26th of April 2020 that the dam well and truly broke well over an hour of cutscenes and gameplay videos from The Last of Us Part Two flooded on YouTube via Anonymous sources showing sections of the game that had never before been seen I will not be discussing any spoilers for The Game's plot in this video but it's safe to say that major parts of it were revealed against the developers wishes in these momentous leaks huge Revelations about the story's Direction and the fate of its characters was spoiled months before the game's launch all of the videos were very clearly taken from in development prototypes of the game as evidenced by details like the build dates being visible during the footage some of the material dated back months prior to the video surfacing suggesting whoever was responsible for obtaining them could have been added for a while the content of the footage especially with regards to cutscenes proved extremely divisive despite some select moments being shown out of context many fans were upset by the overwhelming abundance of spoilers online and pleaded with nauy dog to expedite the gamees launched by releasing it digitally but the suggestion went unrealized Sony stuck firm to its new planned launch date of June 19th 20120 nauy dog acknowledged the situation for the first time on April 27th in a statement posted to Twitter quote we know the last few days have been incredibly difficult for you we feel the same it's disappointing to see the release and sharing of pre-release footage from development do your best to avoid spoilers and we ask that you don't spoil it for others The Last of Us Part Two will be in your hands soon no matter what you see in here the final experience will be worth it Neil drukman one of the games co-directors later discussed his perspective on the leaks during an interview of kind of funny games it was one of the worst days of my life uh when when that leak happened cuz it's like I saw it happening in real time like I saw when Hit YouTube and we're just all panicking texting each other for them to take it down it you know there's a lag so it takes like an hour to take down and it had like hundreds maybe a thousand views before it got all taken down and then you just sit there and you're like your [ __ ] heart sinks and you're like it's out there it's only a matter of time before it blows up and you're just waiting and it's like a few hours later it's everywhere and you're starting to get hate on every social media you're on and soon that turns into death threats and anti-semitic remarks and like just craziness I could have never anticipated in the hours after the videos leaked an onslaught of dubious theories and rumors emerged as to their Source the most prominent of these alleged that a vengeful Naughty Dog contractor had sought retribution against the company following a pay dispute one of the first people responsible for pushing this narrative was super Metal Dave 64 a YouTuber and perve of video game rumors many who believe this Theory cited a March 2020 Kotaku expose on Naughty Dogs working conditions as evidence for it the author of the piece Jason shrier had spoken to developers who detailed an unrelenting culture of Crunch at the studio soon this idea that a disgruntled worker was behind the leaks gained traction across message boards and social media one pose that took off on Reddit for instance alleged the Leer had sought Revenge after naughty dog had refused to pay out bonuses and another source behind the rumors was an article published hours after the leaks took place by a politically far-right culture blog from Australia named sausage roll in the weeks prior false rumors about the plot of The Last of Us Part two were shared by sausage roll claiming that the game featured anti-christian rhetoric sausage roll lifted a fabricated plot and opsis posted to fchan which alleged the story was about an anti-gay religious cult hunting down a same-sex couple extrapolating from this wholly invented forchan post sausage Ro claimed that the leaks were perpetrated by a Christian Naughty Dog worker who didn't approve of the game's LGBT characters the article's writer Arena Rose who lambasted the plot as politically divisive even included quotes from a fake Naughty Dog source to add Credence to their claims sausage R story was then reported on by a number of Enthusiast game blogs who took it at face value but it was nothing more than an attempted astr turfing to direct negativity towards the game samx romance for near a week multiple variations of the disgruntled worker rumors persisted until May 3rd 2020 when none other than pixel buts the aformentioned person behind the Dead Rising four leaks came forward with new information he had gathered evidence that it was not the work of a naughty dog employee but hackers I followed up with pixel buts to learn more about what happened through his connections pixel uncovered that a group of naughty dog fans had exploited a hole in the company's Security in January 2020 this group discovered that each of naughty dog's games with online functionality had their own corresponding cloud storage server via Amazon web services when the studio issued the final patch for each of these titles the security credentials to gain access to these servers were added into the data for these games investigating deeper the hackers found that the Amazon servers for each game contained some amount of data from their sequel for example Uncharted contained data from Uncharted 2 Uncharted 2s had some from Uncharted 3 and so on this was due to the project sharing technology and assets the group used this knowledge to access the server corresponding to the PS4 remastered version of the original Last of Us and it was there that they found the material from The Last of Us Part Two around a terabyte of data was allegedly extracted in total from across their various projects pixel believes that the group of hackers who made these discoveries had no intention of publicly leaking any material from upcoming games and were merely enthusiasts curious about the inner workings of naughty dog however one of them eventually decided to share some of the content with another member of the public outside of their Inner Circle and it was this individual who was apparently responsible for leaking it pixel later supplied naughty dog with details of the breach and understands that the vulnerability has since been fixed on the subject of the initial rumors he had this to say when this happened it was The Perfect Storm given the story of the game and the way things were playing out at the time high turnover of employees incredibly hard crunch Etc it was the perfect lie for some free internet points on the same day as pixel's initial Twitter posts game journalist Jason shrier came forward to back up his account of events speaking to game industry. Biz in May 2020 Sony revealed that they had identified the primary individuals responsible for the leaks and confirmed that they had no affiliation with either naughty dog or Sony according to pixel the group responsible for the exploit was investigated by authorities and did have a series of PlayStation 4 devkit seized and returned to Sony but faced no other legal consequences I spoke to sources linked to Sony and naughty dog who indicated the same was true for the the leaker themselves The Last of Us Part Two leaks caused not only considerable difficulties for those that the companies affected they created a Schism between players who are divided over their content and set the stage for Untold levels of misinformation they go down in history as some of the generation's biggest and most shocking outings of confidential info between 2018 and 2021 the video game Community was is blindsided by a series of leaks so large that the very Act of fully understanding their contents proved challenging for preservationists the Nintendo Giga leak is what many have called the biggest video game leak of all time it was a succession of huge data domes containing files lifted directly from inside Nintendo some of which dated all the way back to the early 1990s it revealed many previously unseen game prototypes early unused material from from various projects rejected pitches Hardware prototypes and even the source code from some of Nintendo's biggest games the historical significance of it all is hard to overstate while cataloging every piece of the gig leak is no doubt a worthwhile Endeavor I want to focus for now on how it happened in the first place who is responsible and the implications of it over the years a consensus has formed that a single person was responsible for extracting this data from Nintendo originally zamus Clark was a self-taught cyber security expert who fell into an underground world of hacking in the mid-2010s Clark adopted a variety of different online aliases at the height of his activist infamy such as slipstream Waco Ry and Riley he first gained some notoriety after exploiting security flaws in VTEC a camera based gadget for children he demonstrated that an SQL injection could be used to effortlessly exposed the names and addresses of its young user base Clark's initial hacking efforts were fairly conscientious as he helped to highlight the shy security practices of large companies like this there was time went on and such moral concerns became less of a priority for him on January 24th 2017 he hacked into servers used by Microsoft to host in development versions of the Windows operating system Clark then shared his methodology with a group of hackers over an Internet relay chart allowing others to follow suit and steal the confidential information of users he also uploaded malware to the network before being discovered and arrested on June 22nd 2017 along with one co-conspirator zam's Clark was released on bail pending trial but rather than keep his head down in the subsequent months he decided to do the exact opposite and attempt an even bigger and more risky intrusion 9 months after his arrest in March 2018 Clark breached a number of servers belonging to Nintendo which hosted a wealth of data relating to their intellectual property Clark's access to Nintendo servers went undetected for months during which time he extracted many gigabytes worth of sensitive files including source code and raw assets from game projects during my research I was able to find evidence that some of this material was shared with other Parties by zames following the hack which undoubtedly resulted in it lat to being leaked to the public Zam CL Invasion into Nintendo was detected by them in May 2018 just as he started to leak a Slither of what he had taken towards the end of April he leaked the software development kit for the IQ player this was a device created for the Chinese market that circumvented their government's B on home consoles it was worked on in collaboration with Nintendo and could play a selection of Nintendo 64 games this leak enabled a group of enthusiasts to hack into the IQ player and preserve its library of games a feat that had never before been accomplished one month later Clark's leaking continued assuming a blank username on Discord he shared early demos of Pokemon Gold and Silver for the Game Boy Color which were previously only shown at the 1997 Nintendo space world event once considered a white whale of video game history for many fans zamus released it to a small Discord server of Pokemon moders on May 26th 2018 they went on to study its many differences such as early alternate Sprites before circulating it more widely following an investigation by UK authorities zamus Clark was rearrested in March 2019 he later pleaded guilty to hacking both Microsoft and Nintendo the latter of which estimated he had cost them upwards of1 1.4 million in Damages the 24-year-old was given a 15-month prison sentence which was suspended for 18 months the judge decided to spare him prison time due to his autism and facial blindness which was concluded would put him at risk of facing violence from fellow inmates and ultimately reoffending it was during his suspended sentence however that the Ripple effects of his actions would be most strongly felt recipients of the material stolen from Nintendo by zamis gradually began to release it in botches through download links on forchan the most infamous of these disclosures took place in Late July 2020 within this drop was the source code for some of Nintendo's most well-known titles including yosi's Island Super Mario Kart Super Mario World The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and many others the leaks enabled a rare and intimate look behind the curtain of Nintendo and how some of their most famous games evolved over the course of development there were early alternate designs for characters like Yoshi from Super Mario World assets from the earliest prototypes for Zelda Ocarina of Time even some long awaited Visual Evidence that Luigi was once intended to be playable in super Mario 64 this was something that fans had speculated about for decades and finally they got a glimpse of what it would have looked like fragments of a Luigi model were found among the leak content for Mario 64 and enthusiasts were able to piece it together Nintendo designer shagura Oto has commented on Luigi's planned appearance in the past explaining his removal Nintendo tested out a multiplayer mode in Mario 64 during development where Mario and Luigi could both run around the same world together and the camera would Zoom outs if the two characters move further apart he told w.com in 2009 that this experiment was abandoned due to the technical constraints of the N64 Hardware Star Fox was another franchise that featured heavily in the leaks the source code for Star Fox 2 on the Super Nintendo was found revealing to the world previously unseen characters that didn't make it into the final game including a T-Rex villain and a female human pilot Star Fox 64's code was among the data as well and enabling fans to mine uncompressed audio files from the game for the first time we need your help Star Fox Falco here I'm fine this is pepy all systems go slippy here I'm okay I see him up ahead let's rock and roll full quality image files from this era were in great abundance too fans uncovered higher res versions of on assets from title like Ocarina of Time that had never before been made available one major Discovery from the giggly Le was Super Donkey an early internal Nintendo prototype for the SNES that predated the development of Yoshi's Island in this 2D platformer the player controlled a limbless man wearing an aviator hat who could fly throughout levels the player could navigate between the foreground and Background by entering doors meanwhile preservationists unearth the full development repository of an unreleased Game Boy Advance add-on known as the IQ net card this highly ambitious device was planned for the Chinese market and was set to allow users to watch movies download full games and play games online extensive documentation from the project was found in the data by Luigi blood that outlin plans for online play in games like fzo maximum velocity an online game based around Pokémon fire red and leaf green was once in the works for it as well which would have included PC connectivity and an online tournament mode as the months went by more h huge data leaks stemming from zamus Clark's breach would continue to surface such as one in September 2020 this round included a multitude of prototypes for the Game Boy including an unreleased Hello Kitty Game Boy camera game there were also development materials from some later titles like wi Sports the project was revealed to have had a pilot Wings esque jetpack game tested for it at one point in October 2020 more data surfaced related to the Pokémon games on the Nintendo switch for instance prototypes of Pokémon sword and shield were leaked revealing a number of early unused assets like an alternate title screen and an abandoned design for a female version of the roten Pokedex the leaks continued into 2021 with a last major bout taking place in July of that year this batch included a wealth of information from the mid 2000s concerning the GameCube and Wii a slew of confidential documents were contained within that people such as mon Omega provided translations for one spreadsheet from 2005 featured an extensive list of plant titles for the Wii DS and GameCube some of which were never released or even announced a sequel to Dance Dance Revolution Mario mix on the GameCube was planned to be made for the Wii at Konami a Metroid game was once in development at intelligent systems that was set to release after Metroid Prime 3 fuse games the creators of Metroid Prime pinball were working on a Pokémon pinball game also for the DS which was slated for September 2006 a medieval themed Battalion Wars spin-off named night Wars was in the works at kuu London all of these never saw the light of day other documents showed a number of early internal prototypes made to test the capabilities of the Wii these included Koopa Trooper Forest a top- down shooter where Mario moved through a forest environment and Mario FPS a shooting game using the Wii remotes infrared pointer that was set in Delino Plaza from Super Mario Sunshine there were images of prototypes for the Wii's user interface including an unfinished Wii Shop Channel from August 2006 and a long list of rejected code names for the Wii Nintendo had considered options such as new Nintendo GameCube Nintendo Aqua famicom Beyond Nintendo Lethal Weapon Nintendo party room Nintendo Everlasting wave and even Nintendo final attack back they eventually settled on Nintendo Revolution more unreleased IQ projects were found in this portion of the breach such as plans for an IQ GameCube console this would have played not only GameCube games but CDs and DVDs as well its developers had even outlined some form of karaoke capability for it it would not have been compatible with regular GameCube discs instead using GameCube games released on standard size DVDs exclusively in China none of these plans ultimately came to fruition the legacy of the gigal leque or gigal leaks depending on how you distinguish them is complicated to game historians it represented a treasure Trove of new information that redefined our understanding of how some of Nintendo's most culturally significant titles came to be but its contents were stolen and published against the will of those involved in its creation alongside all of the prototypes and arts that titilated FS was a lot of data that was never intended for public consumption under any circumstances private messages sent between employees including some from Argonaut games surfaced in the leaks and some of the people affected by this weren't pleased starf Fox developer Dylan Cuthbert offered his perspective on the source code leaks over Twitter saying quote it's private stuff so it feels intrusive source code is ours and hours years and years of personal work long hours Sweat and Tears in the grand totality of the gig leak there was some collateral damage not just the potential Financial damage of Nintendo's source code leaking but some developers were embarrassed to have their private exchanges aired publicly around 30 years after they were written on the other hand there was a wealth of perfectly legitimate information on Nintendo's history that would have never been made available otherwise there was value in this not just for game enthusiasts but also for developers who had worked with Nintendo over the years in 2020 I was researching a consell Game Boy peripheral called the work boy this was a keyboard-based Adon with a productivity software suite produced by a company named Fabtech in collaboration with Nintendo in the summer of that year I was able to recover the only known prototype of the keyboard Hardware confirmed to still exist it was the first time one had been found since it was cancelled back in 1992 near weeks after obtaining the Prototype the September 2020 leak took place and the work Boy software was found within it I was able to pair the software with the hardware and get it working for the first time in decades another positive to come out of this experience however was getting to reunite the developers of the work boy with their software which none of them had archived the creator of the work boy Eddie Gil for example had no copy of his work from all those years ago and was delighted to be able to have a ROM of it to hold on to all this to say that the gig leak was far from a black and white situation ethically zamus Clark's illegal activities came to an end following his second arrest and he abandoned the accounts where he once documented his exploits he has since continued his research into cyber security and gave a talk on it at the electromagnetic field Festival in June 2022 we next direct our attention to the story behind the underground world of Xbox 360 hacking and how it eventually culminated in one of the most infamous and inexplicable video game leaks of all time back in its Heyday the Xbox 360 enjoyed a fairly open development environment due to a service called partnet this was essentially a private XBox Live service accessible via development Hardware that allowed developers to download work in progress builds of upcoming games Studios would upload prototypes of their games often for testers to examine Xbox Live specific features but they would also be available to anyone with a development kit connected to paet including people from other companies developers had to sign non-disclosure agreements with Microsoft to prevent them from revealing any confidential material to the public in comparison to the highly secretive nature of modern game development this was a radically open system that lended well both to creative collaboration and inevitably exploitation if members of the public Were Somehow able to access these development units and connect them to partner net it was only a matter of time before leaks would occur and as time went on that was precisely what happened but how did these machines escape the watchful eye of Microsoft there were a couple of different major causes these development kits were property of Microsoft and intended to be sent back to them once they were no longer needed or if they became defective given that these kits were based on the Xbox 360 which had an unusually high rate of Hardware failure this was a fairly common occurrence non-functional devices would be shipped back to Microsoft who would dispatch them to electronic recycling centers for them to be destroyed sometimes workers at these facilities would retain components from devices like Xboxes to resell them in 2006 an Enthusiast Xbox mod named Rowdy Van Cleave learned that his local recycling plant was filled with parts like and took to investigating he discovered that the center was Rife with disused Xbox development Hardware including motherboards from devkits not just a handful but thousands of them Van Cleave struck a deal with this recycling center to purchased the hardware and began Distributing them to his friends in the Xbox hacking scene the group which later became referred to as Xbox underground found that they were able to resurrect these kits by swapping in new parts from retail Xbox Box 360 units from there they eventually began being sold online as more people joined their community and ofs around the world began finding these parts at their local recycling facilities another big Avenue through which development Hardware made it into the wild was theft the late 2000s through to the early 2010s saw many Studio closures due at least partly to the global financial crisis this meant a lot of people abruptly lost their jobs sometimes without severance pay so it wasn't uncommon for workers to take items from the offices without permission in their last days such as prototypes and Dev kits sometimes these would be lifted for sentimental value a way for them to hold on to a piece of a console project that they had spent a lot of hours toiling away on but some developers would also try to reclaim a piece of their financial stability by selling them it therefore became common for Dev kits to appear on auction sites Enthusiast trading forums even in secondhand stores and yard sales from time to time as the years went on Microsoft failed to keep track of many thousands of units like these and it led to some of the biggest leaks in video game history on the 4th of February 2010 after months of teasing Sega unveiled to the world Sonic the Hedgehog 4 episode one they dropped a trailer with a few seconds of gameplay and a release window of Summer 2010 decades on from Sonic 3 Knuckles the original 2D Sonic Saga was finally being continued fans were divided over its new visual style but there was plenty of excitement around its potential then less than 2 weeks later the floodgates [Music] opened over the course of a couple of days footage of every single level in the game leaked sega's plans of carefully drip feeding single images of concept art were suddenly upended soon there was a direct feed playthrough of the entire game floating around online before Sega had been able to show hardly anything from it on their own terms for context this was the extent of the gameplay they had shown prior to this happening that was it they went from showing about 3 seconds Worth to the whole game being out there to view and worse yet they received some brutal feedback from fans on it regardless of this being a work in progress build months away from launch the Sonic Community laid into it criticizing its presentation the platforming physics and the inclusion of two unique stages in particular Casino Street Zone Act 2 was originally a pinball level where the player had to rack up 100,000 points to complete it more egregiously from the perspective of a lot of fans however was lost Labyrinth Zones Act Two in this stage the player was required to tilt a mine cart by rotating the level to deliver Sonic to the end goal not only did these levels stray away from the traditional 2D platforming many people were expecting but the mechanics of the mineard especially criticized for appearing cumbersome and gimmicky the debacle was a disaster for Sega who very quickly lost control of the narrative and it irreversibly damaged the reputation of the project people were soon able to pinpoint the source of the leaks and yes it was partner net members of the public had used it to access a pre-release build of Sonic 4 episode one and leaked its contents without repercussions Sega hastily tried to control the spread of leaked videos copyright striking people uploading them to YouTube but even that was a losing battle as the videos were easily found on over hosting sites for the following 3 months Sega went radio silent until the 20th of May when they announced that they were delaying the game to L 2010 in response to Fan feedback it was an almost unprecedented decision rather than pretend the leaks hadn't happened Sega chose to listen to the feedback directed at these unofficial videos of prototype footage and attempt to implement what they could with the remaining time and budget they had left one of the biggest shakeups was that those two gimmick based Acts were stripped out of the console versions of the game entirely and redone from the ground up as traditional 2D stages they only appeared in the mobile mobile versions of the game where they remain largely unchanged in response to the leaks Microsoft briefly took partner net offline in February 2010 and began remotely bricking some of the consoles it suspected of accessing the service without proper authorization ultimately however they couldn't stop arguably the most notorious partner net leak from occurring 2 years later it's late May 2012 and the Halo fandom is reeling from a series of possible leaks a usern named R Video posts to the Halo Forum about a message he received from a friend of his who is claiming to have played Halo 4 the game isn't said to be released until the end of the year there is no public beta there has hardly been any footage of the game released yet but somehow this person this friend of our videos claims to have played it our video's friend goes on to tell him all about the game as well as the circumstances through which they L accessed it they claim that they were invited over to a friend's house this person who will call person X tells him that he's in a private Halo 4 beta come over and check it out our video's friend is skeptical he searches Google for word of a Halo 4 beta and can't find any information on one but then he remembers that the father of person X works for Microsoft so his doubts are assuaged he takes a leap of faith and heads over there only to find that as promised he really does have the Halo 4 demo before seemingly anyone else in the world he isn't told how this is possible but doesn't pry and assumes that his dad's connections made this happen our video's friend enjoys the game they message our video about it describing some of the new features before finally adding that the icon for the game app on the Xbox was simply labeled Xbox dashboard at some point you may have heard a tale like this before maybe on a school playground or even on a message Bo just like this one you couldn't be blamed for doubting a story as Sensational as this a friend of someone's friend has a dad who works for Microsoft and he let them play the new Halo before everyone else but what if this story is true what if our video's friend really did play Halo before everyone else let's put a pin in this for now the weight for Halo 4 was considered a long one at least for that era of game development it took over 5 years after Halo 3 for the sequel to finally arrive and continue Master Chief's journey in 343's first turn at the Helm of the franchise while in early teaser was shown off at E3 2011 the months that followed brought little in the way of new info fans were eager to know what this new take on the series would look like and the scarcity of gameplay footage left some seeking alternative means to satisfy their curiosity towards the start of May in 2012 a group of fans associated with the Xbox underground group many of whom teenagers used 360 devkits to gain access to a Halo 4 Prototype hidden on Partner net although Microsoft had concealed the demo and given it an extra layer of security over games available on the open partnernet Library the team of hackers bypassed this with ease the de facto leader of the group David pakora otherwise known as Zen Omega had previously created his own software that could fetch the IDS linked to private demos like this and granted them access while the outside world had hardly seen anything from the game this band of young hackers was quietly playing it 6 months out from launch only a small number of people were invited into the circle of trust and the group initially agreed to keep their Discovery quiet but a find this big couldn't stay secret for long a few weeks after they had started playing Halo 4 someone with access to the Prototype anonymously posted some lowquality offscreen images of it to Reddit on the 26th of May 2012 realizing that they were having their Thunder stolen by an unknown individual the group decided to Stage an elaborate leak video showing the game in motion enter just in May AKA mtw a hacker associated with the Xbox underground who had gained some notoriety for leaks of other Xbox games and an Infamous incident which occurred at PAX East 2010 on the show floor that Year may was scoping out a booth for a then unreleased firstperson shooter game for the Xbox 360 named Bree which was being made by atomic games when the crowd around the demo units for breach dissipated and an atomic employee momentarily stepped away for a bathroom break he quickly connected his laptop to a development kit and began transferring the unreleased game his plan was to steal the game's source code and leak it to his friends in the hacking scene Justin was only able to grab 14 megabytes of its over 2 gabt contents when he was spotted by an atomic staffer he fled the scene rushing through the Expo but was soon apprehended by police despite missing his arraignment the 21-year-old was subsequently given lenient terms by a Boston Court Judge who ordered him to surrender his computer and stay off Xbox Live for 18 months otherwise he was a free man but rather than changing his ways May chose to return to the Xbox underground regaining their trust through various illegal acts and eventually becoming involved in one of the biggest leaks of the generation it was initially posted to YouTube on the 27 7th of May 2012 by an account called 420 xkid X blunt AKA skid kid which was set up by justtin May one day earlier the video takes place in a dimly lit area and Begins by displaying various online aliases belonging to different members of the Xbox underground written down on pieces of paper including mtw just in May and Zen Omega David Pororo the cameraman can be seen approaching an old CRT t vision and inserting a Star Trek Deep Space 9 video cassette inside it which has been taped over the individual then films footage of the Halo 4 multiplayer demo playing on the TV from the VHS all that can be heard during this is a song from SoundCloud rap artist Dylan Harris AKA young Kong the sound levels for which are set so high that it begins to distort [ __ ] hands up his hands up he's a [ __ ] see I this track was chosen because one of the hackers went to high school with Dylan Harris the video was a patchwork of nods to the Halo fandom and Xbox underground in jokes for instance it opens by playing a remix of Twisted Nerve the Whistle Song from the kale Bill soundtrack which was once used during a 2007 leak of Halo 3 beta gameplay the video also pays a mge to Tom Morel which was the Alias adopted by a person responsible for leaking the first images of Halo reach in 2009 no Tom Mel can be seen written on a piece of paper and the Star Trek VHS was another tip of the Hat towards this leer since their namesake Tom MLL the guitarist from Rage Against the Machine briefly appeared in an episode of Star Trek Voyager further amplifying the inexplicable nature of this video is the fact that hay can be seen on the ground in front of the screen which led many people to believe it was being filmed inside a barn it therefore became commonly known as the Halo 4 Barn leak video however it wasn't filmed inside a barn at all I know this because I tracked down the man behind the camera his name is Gabriel Kirkpatrick at the time he was an 18-year-old haaker with ties to the Xbox underground who had access to the Halo 4 multiplayer demo the video was shot at night on the lawn outside his parents house where he lived in May 2012 Gabriel's parents had placed hay on the lawn around their property a gardening technique sometimes employed to protect grass Gabriel collected some of this hay and Scattered it on the ground next to the TV to further add to the Mystique it was never his intention he told me for it to actually look like it was set inside a barn quote we figured we wanted to be the ones to leak it and do it in a funny way we were just all in a voice call bouncing ideas back and forth and it ended up with me putting some of the gameplay I had recorded onto a VHS and then taking an old TV and VCR onto my lawn to record the video Gabriel also expanded upon how their breach of Microsoft servers worked and revealed that the hackers who were playing the Halo 4 demo weren't just playing it with each other quote we bypassed the allow list check so we could play it online it was locked to specific accounts but the checks were all client side so we just patched them out then we spent the next few weeks playing it online with Microsoft employees fans left on the video immediately and a debate played out online over its authentic it while many did recognize it as a legitimate leak from the GetGo a lot of people did not agree with some suggesting that it was a mod of a previous Halo game another large Camp of people on the other hand subscribed to the belief that it was part of an elaborate viral marketing campaign orchestrated by 343 Industries to raise interest in the new game some of the doubters would come around a couple of days later when Microsoft issued a takeown notice and had the video removed from YouTube though it was much too late to curb the Le leak's footprint video game news sites forums and social media was set a light with speculation as to its Origins as few were aware of the Xbox underground's existence at the time while Gabriel and most other members of the crew kept their heads down and would generally C about their involvement just in May was anything but under his handle mtw he could commonly be seen boasting about his connection to the incident in the subsequent days he appeared on a now deleted episode of The Original Gamer podcast he shed some light on the video I'm looking at that there's this very obvious viral campaign video it's not a viral campaign I don't think honestly 343 isn't that clever they've admitted themselves it's not a viral then what comes into the question is why the video the way it was because people you know they don't deserve better they don't deserve better yeah like you know if a video is going to be weak may as well do it in the most funny entertaining way possible the leak was big enough that Microsoft was forced to address it they put out a statement admitting that internal Halo 4 multiplayer tests were taking place but they had no plans for a public beta similar to how they responded to the Sonic 4 leak Microsoft remotely bricked a number of devkits that had access the demo without their approval and bonded any Xbox Live accounts that had been used on those IP addresses according to Gabriel Microsoft successfully Tracked Down everyone involved in the league the hackers later found some dummy files uploaded to pet that were disguised to look like in development DLC for Halo 4 instead what they found were files named after the hometowns of the hackers such as arino main where Gabriel was based rather than pursuing them through the court system Microsoft sent a subtle warning to the group that they had been identified they showed restraint on this occasion and it's clear that some people involved in the making of Halo 4 saw the lighter side of the whole Affair such as then franchise Direct director Franco Connor responding to a fan on Twitter he said the Tom Morell oond leak is the Apex of artistic leaks it will never be topped for sheer frenetic Madness Gabriel cpatrick despite his involvement in the leak went on to have a successful career in cyber security what's more is he even landed a job at Microsoft itself as a security software engineer according to Gabriel he was attending 2016's Defcon a haaka Convention held in last Vegas when a Microsoft rep approached him and encouraged him to apply for a job there this individual knew Gabriel by name due to his involvement in the Halo 4 hacks and subsequent leaks he was told that Microsoft had maintained files on each of the hackers but that didn't deter them from wanting to work with him while some at Microsoft apparently had reservations given his past he was ultimately hired to work for them it was about a day after the leak Hit YouTube back in 2012 that our videos much shared thread on on the Halo Forum was started and fans began to debate its veracity with over 10 years of hindsight I went back to reexamine the story he told factchecking it with sources who had been party to the Halo 4 Prototype at the time and I found that the details they provided were correct the gameplay specifics reflected what was in the demo and the icon for the Prototype on the Xbox was Xbox dashboard as they said there was only one question remaining who was the person who had a father working for Microsoft who was our person X well I believe I have the answer to this too this is armad a former member of the Xbox underground who goes by Arman the Cyber he was a 16-year-old high school student at the time of the Halo 4 leak and although he didn't have a father working at Microsoft his mother was dating a Microsoft employee who worked at their Headquarters in Redmond Washington I asked Arman did he invite people over to play the secretive Halo full demo I in like I invited a lot of people from my high school to come over and play Halo 4 and and we made it like a party because Halo 4 is cool but it's not cool by yourself and so I had the idea to set up land parties months and months before the game was out we would invite everybody from my high school and stack a full 16 Lobby and just go crazy for I mean whole weekends at times I can recall this happening like five different times and everybody would be like yo let me get the game let me get the game it was always a thing like sorry I can't do it this doesn't work like that you know I just try to tell them I mean obviously all my real close friends knew how crazy I was into it and I mean if you were just there and got invited to the party it's cuz I you know we were at least kind of friends you know at school so that was a big thing and that made a lot of noise the man arman's mother was dating was of course not responsible for him accessing the demo Alan was a well-connected hacker with a plethora of 360 Dev kits at his disposal but this isn't the last you'll be hearing of the surprising familiar Connection in this video while those involved in the Halo 4 leak weren't subject to Legal repercussions as a result of it it would be a different series of leak related events that would cause the Xbox underground to finally incur the wrath of some of Gaming's biggest names April 2010 sold the announcement of Gears of War I the much anticipated conclusion to epic's Trilogy chronicling the titular gears and their fight against a race of subterranean monsters after a big debut on late night TV in the US a release date was set for April 8th 2011 that was until Microsoft changed course needing a major title for their holiday lineup the game was pushed back to September 2011 although the vast majority of it was finished on time for its original deadline the extra 5 months enabled the developers to apply more polish it was while fans were excitedly awaiting its new launch date however that a leak of massive proportions would occur back in January 2011 the official epic games website and forums were hacked little did they know at the time that this event would set in motion a domino effect unraveling the secrets of companies across the industry through an SQL injection an Xbox underground regular from North Carolina who called himself gamer freak 1727 had manipulated epic site into disclosing the login details of its user base months later in around June 2011 they passed this data onto a friend of theirs a 15-year-old hacker from Australia named Dylan wheeler who went by superday online Dylan scanned the database for individuals of note and and found passwords connected to accounts with official epic games email addresses the thought occurred to Dylan what if he tested these passwords elsewhere to see if they were reusing them on other sites he tried this multiple times and eventually found someone doing just that an epic games it administrator no less these were Forum accounts belonging to actual epic games employees Dylan entered this employees personal Gmail account searched through his emails and found the login information for their internal epic games account he was able to VPN his way into an epic gam server and log in using the admin's details but before going further he made the decision to reach out to David pakora Dylan wheeler had been distantly admiring bora's Xbox hacks for some time and hoped that presenting him with this discovery would be his ticket into the group's Inner Circle pakora was fascinated for these hackers epic's internal Hub was a gateway to all kinds kind of unreleased software but he needed someone who could extract material like that unnoticed he reached out to another hacker called Sonic real Nam sard nwat who owned a hacked Comcast cable modem this allowed him to connect to Epic servers and download their contents anonymously after searching through their file directories the group Hit Upon a huge Discovery the source code for Gears of War 3 David Pororo was Keen to get his hands on a build of it but rather than transferring the sensitive data over the Internet sonan decided to burn Gears of War 3 to a series of Blu-ray discs and send them through the post in a package labeled wedding videos to avoid suspicion the parcel arrived safely at David bora's house who was then able to play through the entirety of Gears of War 3 months before its official Street date many visual elements remained unfinished but structurally the whole game was in place for them to play it was shared among a small group of people in the Xbox Underground who agreed to keep the discovery quiet eventually however it was given to justtin May the person who would go on to become involved in the Halo 4 leak days later towards the start of July 2011 the stolen build of Gears 3 surfaced on torrenting sites and it became a major news story while rooting through emails belonging to the aformentioned epic games worker in the following days the Xbox underground crew discovered correspondence between epic and federal law enforcement the incident was now being investigated by the FBI who had examined epic's computers for signs of intrusion but had yet to find anything incriminating later that month on July 19th 2011 David pakora began to panic that the leaks would be traced back to him he asked his co-conspirators for help with encrypting hard drives in an effort to conceal his activities I need your help I'm going to get arrested he wrote one day later discussing the data taken from epic servers he told them if we ever go disappearing just upload it to the internet and say [ __ ] you epic if they ever go after us Dylan wheeler on the other hand was undeterred and continued digging deeper into epic's Network he used his access to monitor the company's development processes occasionally going so far as to spy on meetings through their webcams he even got inside lead designer Cliff bazinsky computer and took a peek at his mixtape wheeler then turned his attention towards epic's unreal developer Network this was their portal for the many developers all over the world who were licensing their own real engine where they could learn how to use it download documentation and ask epic staff for help each developer had their own login for the network and Wheeler reasoned that if he could obtain the passwords associated with their accounts it would open up countless new possibilities for the hackers he got to work and eventually located a database of email addresses and partially revealed passwords these were passed along to David pakora who used password cracking software to decrypt a number of the passwords the group tried to reuse this login information elsewhere and found some success they were able to log into various accounts on Microsoft's Xbox developer portal used by people publishing games on Xbox platforms from there they noticed that many developers were using scale form a piece of flash-based software from a company called orderes for Designing user interfaces and hoods for games scale form had its own forums where developers could discuss the software and submit queries Dylan wheeler and Co decided to try logging into it using the same information obtained from epic and again it worked not only that they had gained access to an admin account they were able to use this account to obtain another database of login information this time from scale form and cracked some of its passwords obtaining the initial login details from epic was the group's Ace in the Hole they were able to hop from from sight to site reusing passwords to gain access to developer accounts over and over again but it was cracking the scaleform passwords in particular that enabled them to unleash Havoc they now had passwords linked to staff from some of the biggest companies in the industry like Electronic Arts bunge Microsoft blizzard and Activision when David pakora was able to enter VES Network in late September 2011 they were able to claim their next prize a pre-release version of Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 the game wasn't du out for another 2 months but it been submitted to Val in preparation for its release on Steam with the assistance of Justin May pakora and the others were able to download it and play through the full game this pattern of reusing the cracked passwords across different developer portals continued for years to come in 2012 the group used this method to hack into zombie Studios best known for the spec Op games who were developing simulators for the United States Army they use their access to steal an official Apache helicopter simulator this audacious stunt however would pale in comparison to their next one in the summer of 2012 the group turned its attention towards Microsoft who was in the process of developing their next console the Xbox One known internally at the time as Durango the hackers used their ever expanding list of developer accounts to download information and software related to this new system to the point at which they were able to create a virtual machine capable of running its development software then they found text backs and even instructions for assembling one of these devices they decided that they would use this knowledge to build their own Durango one of the hackers Holly Loro agreed to acquire and assemble the parts themselves which they did successfully they were now the only members of the public to effectively own a Durango it was limited in terms of what it could actually do but they were keenly aware of the massive public interest that would surround the device if word got out Xbox underground figureheads like David bakora and Dylan wheer therefore decided that they would begin manufacturing and selling their own counterfeit Durangos it didn't take long for them to find a buyer through assembl games a collector from the seashells an Ireland in East Africa who bought their first unit for $5,000 us Justin May who was an adep scammer had worked out a way to exploit the US Postal Service for lowcost shipping on the 9th of August 2012 he volunteered to travel to Loo's house take the device off her hands and ship it himself using this method not content with this Dylan wheeler began leaking the existence of the Durango online starting in Late July 2012 Dylan who was then just 16 years old had access to this information and Hardware before almost anyone else and wanted the world to know that under his Alias super day he released pictures of the counterfeit devkit Durango software and a sample image from the new connect then he went a Step Beyond that using the images taken of the first machine that Holly loo had constructed he listed a counterfeit Durango for sale on eBay on the 12th of August 2012 Dylan had been accessing this content for months and finally wanted some recognition for pulling off some of the most Bold video game leaks of all time while the games media scrambled to make sense of these events another collector step forward and agreed to pay wheeler over $20,000 for a Durango but that wouldn't happen the eBay listing was a bluff wheeler did not actually have access to another Durango the first one had been expensive to build and so the crew didn't bother for wheeler the sale was applied for attention rather than money and on that count it had delivered his following grew and press Outlets approached him for answers Gamespot for instance asked him why he was doing all of this and he told them quote YOLO he now had the eyes of the world on him and this was exactly what some people in the scene had been trying to avoid among the Xbox underground the eBay listing was more than little divisive people like David pakora and sard nwat began distancing themselves from Dylan wheeler and some left the group all together they had kept their operations quiet for years and this brought them a lot of unwanted attention their illegal activities continued but became much less frequent in 2013 one hacker named Austin Alcala used crack credentials from their previous intrusions to log into kuu entertainments Network and steal a pre-release build of 2014's thief the group's last big score however would arrive in September of 2013 from 2012 to 13 their Durango leaks had escalated again and again first it was entering Microsoft servers and stealing information on it then they took its software and got that running and finally they used stolen blueprints to build and sell their own Durango the only thing that could possibly top that they imagined would be getting their hands on an official Microsoft made Durango or Xbox One developer kit this was when Arman the Cyber came into the equation Arman was 18 years old by this point living at home near Redmond Washington not far from Microsoft's headquarters he'd become friendly with a lot of people in the scene like Austin alala they would exchange tips on hacking Xbox games and on occasion leaked early builds of upcoming titles Aman was living with his mother at the time who as previously mentioned was in a relationship with a Microsoft employee who worked at their Redmond headquarters this man would visit arman's home regularly after work he'd hung up his coat and leave the employee barge used to access Microsoft's buildings unattended one day in 2012 Alon got an idea he acquired an RFID cloning device and produced a copy of this employ employe barge over the following year he used it to explore Microsoft's vast Redmond campus on multiple occasions he would walk the grounds and scope out its buildings then in 2013 he hatched a plan he spoke to Austin alala and told him he could get an official Microsoft Durango or Xbox One development kit A Step Above what even they'd been able to grasp Alan negotiated access to Microsoft's developer portal with Alcala and used it to pull building schematics he learned the layout of their campus and where exactly the devices were being stored onon knew how to hack but he was also highly proficient in bypassing physical security utilizing his expertise in both he plotted to steal the next Xbox from Microsoft on a night in September 2013 he made his way into their headquarters under the cover of Darkness some employees he told me were still working as they prepared for the launch of the Xbox one no I mean there was definitely still people working at that time I mean they're they're trying to push out a product there's people working you know overtimes and night but it was uh where where I went and and the level that I was going I I knew that there was going to be nobody there I'm on quickly locate the building containing the Durangos and made his way inside yeah so I had to take a lockpick kit with me to you know get through basic blocks I don't want to disclose too much because I don't want to give a tutorial of how to break into Microsoft join me for my Defcon talk on that one after searching through the empty building Arman found what he was looking for he grabbed a Durango stuffed it into his bag and quietly exited the campus completely unnoticed no alarms no Witnesses it was only successful because uh we had breached them digitally you know I had I had more Intel Arman had burgled Microsoft without getting caught he returned home home tested the kid out and shared his findings with his friends in the Xbox underground in terms of leaks and exploits it doesn't get more Brazen than walking into a console Maker's headquarters stealing their in development next machine and showing it to your friends but Arman was about to do it all over again not long after his first infiltration of Microsoft Hub Arman was in communication with David pakora and Austin Alcala according to Arman the two pressured him into perpetrating another burglary to retrieve more Durango units the two hackers transferred Arman a few thousand in exchange for his cooperation and so he went back repeated his process and successfully extracted two more Durangos a week after Arman shipped the devices off he received a call from Microsoft but not for the reason you might expect days prior to stealing from them Arman had applied for a quality assurance position at Microsoft's Redmond Branch they were calling him to offer him the job and he accepted he was now employed at the very place he had just burgled days went by then weeks Arman was working at Microsoft without any issues and they hadn't even noticed the devices were missing what did you think was going to happen did you did you think you could get away with it yeah no I for sure thought I could get away with it so you just thought you you thought you would take them and and they wouldn't figure out who did it well I thought that maybe they'd figure out but maybe they wouldn't care we were desensitized with these things because we've seen so much so many Xboxes go in and out and we know how many go in and out of a place like that and we know you can't really keep your eyes on everything a whole month had passed since arman's Xbox One Heist he was working at Microsoft and it was going well when the company finally noticed what had happened the campus was placed under lockdown security was tightened and an investig ation began into who was responsible however the initial panic over the incident settled after a couple of weeks the lockdown was raised and Arman continued as though nothing had happened then one day during work hours he was summoned into a back room by a Microsoft supervisor he had been identified as the thief in question via CCTV footage and was interrogated by Microsoft staff as a result he was fired and subsequently arrested by police Arman in an attempt to cooperate with authorities begged David pakora and Austin alala to return the stolen devices and they obliged Arman was later charged with burglary and given a one-year suspended sentence which he served without incident the Microsoft employee whose barge he used for his break-in remained employed by the company as they were deemed not to have been complicit in any way arman's arrest marked the beginning of the end for the Xbox underground in the following years the community scattered and its figureheads were apprehended by authorities in 2014 David pakora attempted to cross the US border from Canada and was arrested for his involvement in the epic games and Activision Hawks among many others one year later the 22-year-old was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit fraud Austin Alcala for his role in the same crimes was arrested in January 2014 and faced the same charges it emerged that he had maintained a database of over 11,000 sets of usernames and passwords stolen during their exploits alala avoided prison time by cooperating with federal agents to bring down another group of hackers who' been stealing millions of dollars worth of in-game currency from EA's FIFA games he was later sentenced to 3 years of probation sonar nwat who had assisted in Haws such as the epic games breach was arrested the same year and like pakora was later given 18 months prison one of the only major players in the Xbox underground to evade law enforcement was Dylan wheeler the teenager was charged by Australian police in March 2015 but fled the country flying to the Czech Republic before his sentencing in his absence his mother an wheeler was sentenced to 2 years in prison for helping him escape the Xbox underground finally faced its Reckoning but what none of them realized initially was that it was brought down from the inside from early on in their activities an informant for the FBI was among them collecting evidence and manipulating events this enigmatic figure was instrumental in building the state's case against the hackers the individual went Anonymous throughout Court proceedings being listed only as person a however former members of the group are certain of the informant's identity and there is plenty of evidence to support these suspicions remember how the group's homemade Xbox One prototype was intended to be sent to a buyer in the SE shells well they never received it after it was given to just in May it disappeared FBI documents indicate that it was handed off to them in Delaware by person a the only member of the Xbox underground known to be from Delaware was just in May when David pakora was arrested crossing the US border he was on his way to pick up a car part from an online friend in Delaware that friend was just in May one of the only Central figures in the Xbox underground to avoid prosecution was just in May w.com reached out to him in 2018 to find out whether or not he was person a and he told them quote can't comment on that sorry some claim that after getting caught stealing from P back in 2010 he offered to become an informant in exchange for a more favorable deal among the group there had been suspicions about May for years but he succeeded in embedding himself by routinely committing criminal acts May was is a prolific scammer he was not only swindling the post office but a long list of tech companies through warranty scams he would trick auction site sellers into sending him the serial numbers of devices like Kindles and iPads after feigning an interest in buying them then he would submit the serials to Tech Support Services telling them the device was defective and getting them to send him a brand KN one as a replacement he would collect these from an abandoned house he registered as his address PR before selling them online a fraudulent scheme that proved highly lucrative for him law enforcement turned a blind eye to MAA activities for years as he proved a useful Ally in dismantling the Xbox underground but he eventually outlived his usefulness to them he only increased the volume of his scams in the years after the group was dissolved and this was something the FBI was no longer willing to overlook in 2021 he was convicted for a lengthy series of warranty scams dating back to 2016 along with a host of financial crimes like tax evasion and money laundering he had scammed companies such as Amazon Cisco and Microsoft and made over $3.5 million doing it justtin may was given a prison sentence of 7 years and 8 months and ordered to pay more than $4 million in restitution when I spoke to om on the Cyber one of the first questions I asked him was where his fascination with the world of Xbox hacking and leaks came from he told me about how as a kid growing up not far from Microsoft he would on occasion get opportunities to focus Test games in the works long before they would release uh before I got my first taste of actually hacking games before they were getting out and getting them I was actually getting to test them by Microsoft they were giving me to them and kind of seeing that games were in development and stuff like that I always loved the games that were in development more than the final game like I always remembered the in development gaming memories versus the final game so like that kind of always stuck with me too as a kid it was this excitement of having exclusive access to something before everyone else that he would continue to chase for years to come I recognized a small part of myself in what he was describing I too knew the excitement of obtaining something the rest of the world had yet to see whether it's un over in console games or something yet to be announced it was a particularly potent feeling when I could get my hands on something that I knew a company didn't want me to but Al Man story and stories like it shows how far some are willing to go in pursuit of that Rush that's something that many of these stories have in common aside from one or two folks like Gabriel Kirkpatrick who ended up working at Microsoft almost none of these people's lives benefited in any material way from these leaks and hacks almost none of of them made any money in the end or succeeded in leveraging their notoriety to their benefit people like haran and many other members of the Xbox underground were in it for the thrill they did it because they loved getting to see games and Technology before everyone else and on occasion they enjoyed sharing their finds to show the world that they were smart enough to pull it off they did it even at the expense of their own features lives were torn apart doing this some of them lost jobs received criminal records some even went to prison or largely in pursuit of a fleeing high today Arman like many of his friends from back then is more than a little regretful for his actions yeah um definitely don't do what I do let me just say that since the events of 2013 Alan has turned his life around and is pledged to use his skills for good he began operating a computer security company named the good hackers who work to protect businesses from all manner of cyber security threats video game leaks like these will continue to happen but the wild west era of the Xbox underground is over companies across the industry of Titan security over the years and Microsoft shut down partner net after the Xbox 360 generation that development environment has since become much more locked down following the string of major leaks it once enabled I want to end on an observation made by pixel buts who was a recurring part of this video that I found hard to argue with quote what personally gets me is that despite all the security vulnerabilities around efforts to exploit it all and protect against it the fact the human element ends up being the hardest to defend against is easily my favorite end quote there's some truth to that whether it's human error disgruntled employees or curious hackers that lead to these leaks what all of these incidents have in common is that companies simply cannot account for that human element tighter security or not leaks are inevitable

Channel: DidYouKnowGaming

Views: 263,934

Keywords: video game leaks, gaming leaks, video game rumors, gaming rumors, video games, video game, gaming, smash bros, super smash bros, mario + rabbids, mario, super mario, rabbids, half-life 2, the last of us part ii, the last of us, the last of us part 2, sonic, sonic the hedgehog, sonic the hedgehog 4, halo, halo 4, did you know gaming, didyouknowgaming, dykgaming, dykg, game history secrets, liam robertson, nintendo, sega, microsoft, xbox, sony, playstation

Id: uO0gbkqt11E

Length: 127min 11sec (7631 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023