UPDATE
Are you glad that other developers are supporting Insomniac in their time of need? Will this get other devs to tighten security to ensure this doesn’t happen to them? Let us know below!
ORIGINAL STORY
Just when you thought the gaming year would end somewhat peacefully, a massive attack on a fan-favorite developer caused shockwaves throughout the industry. As you likely have heard, Insomniac Games was hit with a ransomware attack. But it wasn’t just a simple attack; the people behind it were demanding millions from the company and were threatening to expose all sorts of information about the company, the games it was working on, and the people within the company if they didn’t pay up. Well, they didn’t, and a leak of massive proportions was spread across the internet for all to see.
The response to the leak has been very telling. Some people couldn’t wait to dive into the leaked documents and see what they revealed. Many were interested in the games that were being “revealed” for the first time and the gameplay footage that was leaked along with it. Others refused to post about the leak on their websites, as they felt it would highlight that they were “glad” that the leak happened, even though it hurt Insomniac in the process.
It’s a very weird and dark situation, and there’s very little that can be said to be “good” about it all. However, one positive thing is that in the wake of all of this, many game developers have posted messages of support for Insomniac to highlight that they’re there for them and hope that no one tries to exploit the situation more than it’s already been exploited. Here are some of the highlights from this movement:
As you can easily imagine, a leak of this scale is the worst nightmare for many game developers. Ironically, this isn’t the first leak of this nature to happen in recent times. We all remember when a huge leak happened with Rockstar Games and exposed much of what was going on with GTA 6. And just like then, many people tried to capitalize on things by making videos and content based on the leak. One thing that many did was criticize the videos that were leaked because of how “bad” they looked for a Rockstar Games title.
However, just like now, game developers flew in to support Rockstar and highlight how the videos were clearly Alpha videos and nothing more.
While there are plenty of “rivalries” in the gaming space, developers know that if something bad like this can happen to one of them, it could happen to all of them, and no one wants that.