Dan Allen has accidentally revealed himself to be the games leaker TheRealInsider. In the fallout of his flub, Dan has apologized and has sworn to stop leaking information on video games.
Dan ran the Twitter account TheRealInsider alongside a separate account under his own name for his YouTube channel. The jig was up when he made the mistake of replying to a question directed to TheRealInsider using his Dan Allen account. Dan deleted both his accounts, but later thought better of it and posted an apology on Twitter and YouTube.
Industry insiders revealing information on upcoming games can be a touchy subject, but not everyone who does so is seen negatively. The Game Awards organizer Geoff Keighly occasionally shares new information that hasn’t been revealed before. Most of the time, it’s something related to games and game companies he works with for The Game Awards, but sometimes it will be genuinely novel. And then there are people like Jeff Grubb or Jason Schreier. Jeff will occasionally share a rumor or something previously unrevealed. Jason is in a position to put game companies to account, so he will reveal things for the sake of the public interest.
For these people, they do put consideration of certain things, like the trust of people in the industry, before they decide to reveal information on upcoming games. If they leak a game a certain way, it may compromise the way the game is marketed or sold, and even the way it is being produced. Of course, the very recent case of the Grand Theft Auto 6 leak demonstrates this.
As The RealInsider, Dan had shared things like the entire Assassin’s Creed lineup for this year, compromising Ubisoft’s plans for their official reveal. In these and other leaks, Dan had betrayed the trust of the companies working with him in his capacity as an influencer. Schreier had tracked down and confirmed that both Dan and TheRealInsider leaked many similar or the same pieces of game information. That included some news that we would eventually report on in an official manner, like Metal Hellsinger‘s tracklist, the name Assassins’ Creed Mirage, and the recent preview for Forspoken.
While Dan Allen is currently getting the worst of it from people in the community, this whole situation raises questions about the broader issues surrounding game leaks. While it can be fun for fans to learn about upcoming games, and the games media may sometimes have no choice when reporting on certain leaks, we do need to understand and recognize that such leaks do more than irritate and annoy CEOs and number crunchers. A game that’s been revealed before its time, a project that has to be canceled for various reasons, these are situations where the livelihoods of the rank and file in the industry are on the line. The success and failure of these video games determine who gets to keep on working and who leaves if and when they are fired or their companies are shuttered. Leakers do not always act in the best interests of the industry, which means they also hurt gamers themselves.
