A hacker group claims to have data from Insomniac Games, including their upcoming game, Marvel’s Wolverine.
As reported by CyberDaily in Australia, a ransomware operator called Rhysida claims to have hacked Insomniac successfully. Rhysida are now holding up the studio’s data for ransom. As of this writing, Sony, Marvel/Disney, and Insomniac Games have yet to comment on the claim.
But this ransomware claim seems legitimate. Rhysida has furnished some data as proof of the hack, and it visibly includes a picture of Wolverine himself.
Wolverine appears to be wearing the X-Force version of his suit. While the most iconic costumes he had in the 1990s had the yellow and black color scheme, and then the yellow and tan costume, the X-Force version has a black and grey color scheme, while retaining the yellow and tan costume design.
A smaller picture shows Logan wearing more casual clothes, with a cowboy hat, jacket, and pants. So it looks like we will get multiple costumes for the game, and hopefully Insomniac has the rights to give us the familiar 1990s costumes, as well as other fan favorites.
The image could also be hinting at Marvel’s Wolverine using an over the shoulder perspective. This would presumably be an accommodation for a gameplay style that better suits Wolverine, that is markedly different than how Insomniac handled Spider-Man.
Unfortunately, Rhysida also seems to have more personal information. They shared one document that shows the name of Yuri Lowenthal, the voice actor for Spider-Man in Insomniac’s games. They also put up passport scans of a former Insomniac employee who now works at Disney.
We don’t want to speculate on this particular detail that much, but here’s what’s implied by this specific data leak: Rhysida has proof that they know how Insomniac got connections within Marvel, and they are threatening to share that information. We don’t know if there was something inappropriate in those connections, but even if there wasn’t, just revealing the connection, on its own, would be damaging to both companies.
We also can’t discount that Rhysida’s claims are completely bogus. They may be putting up this show for publicity, and this information that they have partly leaked may actually all be faked.
But we have to reckon with what happens next if Rhysida really did successfully execute a ransomware attack and what this means for Insomniac. Will they now have to change their timetable for making Marvel’s Wolverine? Should the industry take this as a wake up call against leaks for games currently in production? Would Sony be willing to pay such a ransom, and along the way create a bad precedent?
If the leak is real, we should learn the answers to these questions soon enough.
