Something incredible has surfaced as a result of the Insomniac leak, and that something incredible may make you something frustrated.
It has been three months since hacker group Rhysida threatened the game studio with ransom for 1 TB worth of private information that they managed to steal from the company’s servers. Sony and Insomniac did not pay the ransom, and as a result, Rhysida went ahead with leaking the company’s private information.
We will discuss the leaked information below. We can’t ignore this news, but we will point out the way the information was obtained was particularly unethical. You may want to consider this yourself before you go forward with reading this news. But, like Pandora’s Box, it isn’t possible for us to just close the box and pretend nobody found out what they did.
What we have now is a trailer for something called Spider-Man: The Great Web. The trailer’s contents make it look like an online game. Unfortunately, that means this is likely the online multiplayer Spider-Man game that we already know got cancelled by Sony. Sources claim that the decision to cancel came before the leak, but then, that means it may have been cancelled because of business decisions that also led to layoffs across PlayStation Studios.
The trailer has Peter Parker narrating, and featuring him and several other Spider-Verse characters working together to fight classic Spider-Man villains.
We see what looks like gameplay featuring Miles Morales, Scarlet Spider, Spider-Gwen, black suit Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Spider-Man 2099, and the classic Peter Parker Spider-Man. Notably, the characters are seen in the same screen attacking opponents, sometimes even working together. We definitely get visual confirmation that Venom is one such opponent, and distinguished from black suit Spider-Man.
The trailer also shows art previewing other Spider-Verse characters that hint that they could also become playable. They include Cindy Moon, AKA Silk, Spider-Punk, AKA Hobart Brown, and hiding in mists appears to be Maybelle Reilly, AKA Lady Spider.
Other art in the trailer previews other enemies, including Mysterio, and an incarnation of the Sinister Six that includes Venom, Electro, Shocker, The Vulture, Scorpion, and Dr. Octopus.
Unfortunately, we have to get back to reality, and that reality being that it is likely that this trailer is for a game that was not moved forward to become a full title. The trailer certainly looks promising, and Helldivers 2’s success obviously hints at the potential of online cooperative PvE multiplayer games.
But we can’t really know why the decision was made to cancel this title. It’s possible, as I hypothesized above, that it was just a victim of budget cuts. Either Sony thought Insomniac was costing them too much, or they didn’t think they could afford the royalties.
But it’s also possible that the decision came from Insomniac themselves. Perhaps they realized they weren’t up to the task of making this type of game. Or, like Naughty Dog, they decided they didn’t want the commitment of a live service game.
Whatever the reason, we have to accept that this trailer, which BTW was not officially released, is technically vaporware.
