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PlayStation Insomniac Studios Upcoming Titles Have Leaked

Pillydillsy said:
The last of us remaster that recently came out took away the art style of the original. The PS3 game, while going for a realistic look, still wasn‘t generic and looked distinct. The new remaster just looks exactly like every other modern playstation game visually
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Hm. I must have a faulty memory because I really didn't see a distinct art style in TLOU. It was just a very good looking game with incredible assets. TLOU2 is a gorgeous game, so I'm not really sure I see an issue with them trying to do more of that.
 
PixelKnight said:
Is it really hypocrisy to handle a similar situation better three years later? If they go on to do the same again in future then sure, that’ll seem a lot like making an exception for Sony, but 3 years is enough time to decide ‘maybe we should do better’.

Eh, does it really matter if leaked games years out get talked about today or tomorrow? What’s important today is staff having their details posted online, and any opportunity to remind people there are human beings spending large chunks of their careers on these massive projects is a good thing. By Christmas readers won’t care about staff woes, but in the new year they’ll still be discussing Insomniac upcoming games. It’s not like the leak isn’t splashed all over dozens of outlets anyway. No outlet is required to focus on gamer excitement and clicks within hours rather than take a moment to think about what’s more important. Better journalism is something we should encourage.
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Of course, if they've improved on past mistakes and have made a genuine effort to promote better journalist that'd be objectively good for the industry. However, it's difficult for me to give them the benefit of doubt and assume that this is character growth because of takes like these:

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This news is gigantic, and it is all newsworthy. It's not the job of a journalist to protect the interests of a private corporation. What other industry could you point to in which something like this would happen?

It reeks of bias, but only time will tell
 
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touchfuzzy said:
I'd say it's in very early pre-production as a smaller-scale PS6 launch window game that showcases visuals and new features, similar to Rift Apart. Probably just some notes and drawings in a notebook right now.
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there is a script and decent amount of concept art, some early dev work etc... but yeah all early at the moment
 
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Well it's good to hear that Rift Apart did actually make money. I'm sure it would have profited eventually anyways, but still. Makes a lot more sense that they are still planning to make another one now.
 
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Truno said:
Of course, if they've improved on past mistakes and have made a genuine effort to promote better journalist that'd be objectively good for the industry. However, it's difficult for me to give them the benefit of doubt and assume that this is character growth because of takes like these:
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You don't believe they could have changed their ethics because they post clickbait YouTube videos? Or because other people tweeted some stuff? Genuinely unsure what you're saying here
Truno said:
This news is gigantic, and it is all newsworthy. It's not the job of a journalist to protect the interests of a private corporation.
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This is true, and a perfectly reasonable point. I would stick to points like this rather than weird, nebulous jabs about it being "hypocritical" for journalists to choose not to report on it if they don't want to, even if they've held different opinions in the past, or implying some kind of deeper conspiracy with takes like this:
Truno said:
It reeks of bias, but only time will tell
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hologram said:
This is true, and a perfectly reasonable point. I would stick to points like this rather than weird, nebulous jabs about it being "hypocritical" for journalists to choose not to report on it if they don't want to, even if they've held different opinions in the past, or implying some kind of deeper conspiracy with takes like this:
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Sure, perhaps I bit the bullet and calling it bias is a bit accusatory. But, isn't it equally as conspiratory to assume that these outlets are removing themselves out of this situation to improve gaming journalism as a whole?

And, genuine question here, what other reason would you entertain as to why these aforementioned outlets have reported on major leaks year long but have abstained on reporting on this particular one? Why turn a leaf on this particular one? I know you can't speak on behalf of them, but, for the purpose of the discussion, I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

So far MVG is the only one that's confirmed a motive:



 
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Truno said:
Sure, perhaps I bit the bullet and calling it bias is a bit accusatory. But, isn't it equally as conspiratory to assume that these outlets are removing themselves out of this situation to improve gaming journalism as a whole?
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No
Truno said:
And, genuine question here, what other reason would you entertain as to why these aforementioned outlets have reported on major leaks year long but have abstained on reporting on this particular one? Why turn a leaf on this particular one? I know you can't speak on behalf of them, but, for the purpose of the discussion, I'd be interested in knowing what you think.
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Honestly, I think it could be as simple as a growing sense of discomfort around the issue. Maybe after they covered the Capcom leak in 2020, they read some comments (or self-reflected) and felt bad about it. Maybe it's just that as these leaks become prevalent, they become slightly less noteworthy and so the moral discomfort starts to outweigh the newsworthiness in some reporters' eyes, or the public perception around them begins to shift away from "ooooh cool a look behind the curtain" to "this feels like violation". Maybe it's a combination of the above

It's perfectly valid to feel this is newsworthy and should be covered. I'm in two minds on the issue, myself. I just don't think we need to ascribe ulterior motive to those who choose to stay out of it, especially some of the console war adjacent, "hmm, interesting they won't cover a Sony leak!" takes, which I find a bit gross
 
hologram said:
Honestly, I think it could be as simple as a growing sense of discomfort around the issue. Maybe after they covered the Capcom leak in 2020, they read some comments (or self-reflected) and felt bad about it. Maybe it's just that as these leaks become prevalent, they become slightly less noteworthy and so the moral discomfort starts to outweigh the newsworthiness in some reporters' eyes, or the public perception around them begins to shift away from "ooooh cool a look behind the curtain" to "this feels like violation". Maybe it's a combination of the above

It's perfectly valid to feel this is newsworthy and should be covered. I'm in two minds on the issue, myself. I just don't think we need to ascribe ulterior motive to those who choose to stay out of it, especially some of the console war adjacent, "hmm, interesting they won't cover a Sony leak!" takes, which I find a bit gross
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Fair enough.

In my opinion, the job of these journalists is to cover the videogame industry. It's not their job to protect a specific company regardless of any other factors. Not covering this for x y or z reason is failing their readers. What caused me to use the word bias was OpenCritic's statement. It reads as extremely selective and unprofessional. The way they're twisting SPJ's Minimize Harm standards is mind-boggling:

bafkreigf3xf5qz3lskxx3t7hphglkwepz267lqczikvtlmzkgv5fielqnm@jpeg




EDIT: The comparison goes beyond Capcom, as we've seen the same thing with Rockstar, Blizzard, DC, NVIDIA, etc.
 
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I don't think there's some sinister conspiracy here but I also don't really buy the change of heart some publications supposedly had between the Capcom leak and the Insomniac leak, especially since there were multiple leaks in the meantime that were openly covered. Gamespot had no issue reporting on the GTAVI leak from September with footage (that has since been deleted):

www.gamespot.com

Massive GTA 6 Leak Unveils Screenshots And Early Footage

A hacker has released multiple videos and screenshots of what appear to be the previously unseen title.
www.gamespot.com www.gamespot.com

What also hurts the credibility of these outlets is that there was never really any public reckoning with the gaming media's role in disseminating the contents of gaming leaks. Picking this incident specifically to change how they report on leaks comes off as extremely hollow. But we won't know for sure until the next time there's a leak of a similar nature whether there's actual favouritism at play.

I think there's a real conversation to be had about "leak culture", clout chasing and the gaming media's role in all of this. Choosing not to report on the contents of this leak, however, is both not journalistic and also naive. First of all, acting like public information - regardless of how it was publicized - does not exist is just extremely impractical. Imagine GameSpot or Kinda Funny reporting on PlayStation software sales and using Sony's public ballpark figures instead of the hard numbers uncovered during the leak. Especially when a portion of your readers have most likely seen those numbers. Same with all the other stuff like their release roadmap, Sony's internal presentations etc. Who exactly does it serve to pretend that they haven't seen that information?

But also more importantly, one of the duties of journalists is to contextualize and fact check public information. Especially with something like this that has spread far and wide very quickly due to the nature of the content and the public interest in it. Thinking that gaming publications like GameSpot are somehow hurting Insomniac by spreading it further is just extremely detached from reality. All of this stuff will have made its rounds through Reddit and multiple Discord servers before gaming journalists have even written a single line of an article. By choosing to ignore it you're also letting laypeople and bad faith actors dominate the narrative.

Take something as small as the slide on page 9 of this thread. Everyone who saw that image now thinks that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was a flop and lost money. It wasn't until hours later that we found out that those might not even be actual sales numbers or at least outdated. This is where journalist should come in and inform their readers. But you can't really do that if you willingly take yourself out of this situation. I'm willing to bet that this piece of misinformation is going to be quoted for years to come.
 
From what I've read it appears that more data has been stolen. Do we know if users' credit card details have been stolen again?
Last time I had to close and redo my credit card.
 
Teal'c said:
From what I've read it appears that more data has been stolen. Do we know if users' credit card details have been stolen again?
Last time I had to close and redo my credit card.
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This appears to be targeted specifically at Insomniac and not Sony itself. Personal data of Insomniac employees has been stolen but there's no word on customer credit card data.
 
IGN no longer has any of the leaked story news on their front page or even on their Playstation tab. If they took the stories down because of fears of Sony blacklisting them, thats ridiculous.
 
Scrawnton said:
IGN no longer has any of the leaked story news on their front page or even on their Playstation tab. If they took the stories down because of fears of Sony blacklisting them, thats ridiculous.
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I read that loads of publications don't want to highlight the breach to supposedly "protect" the people at Insomniac whose personal data got stolen. Which is pretty naive to me since news is news and it also reeks like publications think they are actually the only and first ones bringing news which to be fair hasn't been the situatiion for a long time. This is all over social media.

I think outlets should do what would be responsible: report on the news fairly, factualand unbiased, give context and nuance without of course linking to the actual data.

Edit: but if blacklisting is the actual reason, that would be so awful. Though the stories are still up.
 
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The Capcom thing was long enough ago (though honestly not that long ago) that I can believe not reporting on the leaks because outlets have changed their views or learned about the perspective of developers ... but the Rockstar leak is really recent. This is just incredibly hypocritical, and the faux virtue signaling of not wanting to impact devs even though it's news and they just did it weeks ago with Rockstar is hilarious.

Stating that they're not going to report on personal information is also funny because, they've never done that recently, and no one is asking them to do that. They're just conflating the actual news that they've always reported to take a moral high ground.
 
This thread is funny. “Those poor Insomniac developers are CHAINED and FORCED to work on this IP, how tragic!”

And the IP in question is Spider-Man.

Whose latest game was a Game of the Year contender that’s selling like hotcakes.

People here really like projecting their personal Marvel fatigue on people they haven’t met. I loved Rift Apart and I’m sad it didn’t turn a profit but the Spider-Man games were also amazing and full of love for the old webslinger. I imagine they’re not crying at their desks to make more games in this unique Spider-Man universe they’ve crafted.
 
AngryAlchemist said:
The Capcom thing was long enough ago (though honestly not that long ago) that I can believe not reporting on the leaks because outlets have changed their views or learned about the perspective of developers ... but the Rockstar leak is really recent. This is just incredibly hypocritical, and the faux virtue signaling of not wanting to impact devs even though it's news and they just did it weeks ago with Rockstar is hilarious.

Stating that they're not going to report on personal information is also funny because, they've never done that recently, and no one is asking them to do that. They're just conflating the actual news that they've always reported to take a moral high ground.
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Three years is a decent amount of time I agree but let’s keep in mind a lot of the people that report on these stories were and are full blown adults who have worked in this space for a long time. I think anyone with some level of critical thinking skills could parse out that reporting on all the projects leaked from the capcom hack was nothing other than profiting off of a bad situation. I think the leaks should all be fair game since it’s not like all this information is just going back into the bottle but I just can’t take anyone who was outside of their twenties when capcom was hurt and just now thinks this kind of thing actually might hurt developers.
 
Elliot Carver would have reported on these leaks.
While also being the party responsible for them in the first place.
 
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It's all very well and good asking people not to talk about what happened to Insomniac, but at this stage, it's akin to a Stablemaster asking local residents not to gossip about how the Master's prized stallion has bolted from the stable, when the stable door is dangling off its hinges and half the town saw the horse galloping through the town centre, leap over the church wall and then sprint to the neighbouring valley. It's unfortunately a little late for privacy.

Now the information is out there I would say it's up to outlets not to ignore it as a favour to the dev team, but instead they should report on it honestly and responsibly. Tell people that it was obtained illegally, focusing on the harm it's caused, while succinctly reporting what was leaked so that people don't get tempted to go searching for the 'juicy details' in dodgy places where employee details are at risk. And of course do not report on anything that can put Insomniac employees at risk.

I am sorry for everyone at Imsomniac that this happened. It truly sucks. But I feel coercing journalists and fans into silence is going overboard here. It just becomes a massive elephant in the room which doesn't benefit anyone. We can discuss the contents and ramifications of this breach while also understanding how serious and upsetting it is for those at the heart of it.

As a slight addendum, I do feel that this industry's obsession with secrecy does make it a particularly juicy target. If company's were a bit more honest with us about their upcoming pipelines, there'd be less incentive for hackers. I mean I don't understand why Sony and Marvel didn't just publically announce they'd struck a deal to produce more Marvel games including an X-Men instalment? I mean hell, we know what their plans for the movies are for the next 5 years or so, and accept things change there cough Kang cough, why can't we do the same for games?
 
Truno said:
Fair enough.

In my opinion, the job of these journalists is to cover the videogame industry. It's not their job to protect a specific company regardless of any other factors. Not covering this for x y or z reason is failing their readers. What caused me to use the word bias was OpenCritic's statement. It reads as extremely selective and unprofessional. The way they're twisting SPJ's Minimize Harm standards is mind-boggling:

bafkreigf3xf5qz3lskxx3t7hphglkwepz267lqczikvtlmzkgv5fielqnm@jpeg




EDIT: The comparison goes beyond Capcom, as we've seen the same thing with Rockstar, Blizzard, DC, NVIDIA, etc.
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I went to J-school and if you tried to argue that Insomniacs developers would experience "harm" because you told the public about a future video game they were going to reveal and release on their own anyway, you'd get laughed out of the room.

And from what I've seen nobody in the game's press is personally posting the private information contained in the leak. They're reporting on the (rightfully) news worthy content of future game plans. Plans that would have been reported on anyway if there had been an "Insomniac Direct" last week.

Completely agree that it's super gross anyone would twist the harm standard to fit into this situations. That standard has typically been reserved to protect people who have suffered from violent crime, are in active war zones, could potentially get killed for talking to the press, etc.

It was not created to stop people from reporting on the future business plans of a major corporation. Someone should tell the intern on the Open_critic account that casually browsing the SPJ website isn't the gotcha they think it is.

Anyway the most telling thing about that tweet is that they also try to argue consumers would get "harmed" because they weren't advertised to correctly. What a hilariously dumb argument. The consumers aren't harmed in the slightest give me a fucking break.
 
I hope they have time to pretty significantly change that wolverine game. It really doesn't look like wolverine at all. I can take him going to Japan if they absolutely have to, but Wolverine should be short fat ugly and with stink lines like Mad Dog Vachon in a rubber suit. This looks way too similar to Spiderman without the celebrated traversal mechanics.
 
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I think that all should Talk about the fact that leak proof that AAA gaming is going to a long death

I mean when SPIDER MAN is the only IP that can break EVEN, it means that we are at the end of days
 
Samus95 said:
I think that all should Talk about the fact that leak proof that AAA gaming is going to a long death
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COVID boom allowing potential employees to secure the bag, and rightfully so, probably is causing games which have been in development since that time period and in the future to be drastically higher than pre-pandemic. Especially in those competitive markets like California.
 
Some or a majority of gaming “journalists” and outlets have always been more apologists/public relations to the video game publishers. It’s telling that these news sites have consistently reported on leaks, but suddenly stop to do so because, coincidentally, it’s a media darling: Insomniac/PlayStation/Sony.

If they’re afraid to be blacklisted from Sony, then call them out. If they’re scared of losing their jobs, then they shouldn’t have reported on it from the get go
 
Kinda Funny Games replied to the backlash and they pretty much disregard the criticism as trolls and mention that they covered the Capcom leak because it was, "less damaging" than Insomniac's:



They didn't even attempt to hold the position of, "We have learned since the Capcom leak".
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
Did they delete the tweet or is it just not showing up because of Twitter being borked?
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Nobody's tweets seem to be showing up at all. I open up my feed, it acts like I just made a new account and recommends me people to follow rather than showing tweets from the people I already follow. When I go directly to someone's profile, it literally doesn't show any posts from them at all
 
BlackthornOrion said:
Nobody's tweets seem to be showing up at all. I open up my feed, it acts like I just made a new account and recommends me people to follow rather than showing tweets from the people I already follow. When I go directly to someone's profile, it literally doesn't show any posts from them at all
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Ran into the same exact issues as you. But now it seems to be back again, at least for the time being.
 
Truno said:
Kinda Funny Games replied to the backlash and they pretty much disregard the criticism as trolls and mention that they covered the Capcom leak because it was, "less damaging" than Insomniac's:



They didn't even attempt to hold the position of, "We have learned since the Capcom leak".
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This is so embarrassing cause they usually handle difficult topics and criticism well. But like they are serious lacking awareness. It does not help how Greg is in Spiderman 2. Like he and Kinda Funny are biased and it really shows. At least saying they learned from the capcom leak sounds better lmao. Here they just sound arrogant and extremely biased.
 
Hocot8 said:
This is so embarrassing cause they usually handle difficult topics and criticism well. But like they are serious lacking awareness. It does not help how Greg is in Spiderman 2. Like he and Kinda Funny are biased and it really shows. At least saying they learned from the capcom leak sounds better lmao. Here they just sound arrogant and extremely biased.
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There's no "lacking awareness" Greg Miller in particular knows exactly what he's doing. The man graduated from one of the better journalism universities in the country. He's been taught all about the ethics in journalism. But he's chosen the bag over that, this isn't the first time and certainly won't be the last time. The epitome of access journalism.
 
The irony of KF's stance on this is that a lot of the info in the link directly relates to Sony/PlayStation corporate. It's valuable information that would help their audience understand this industry more. Which they would know if they treated this like professional journalists instead of applying some half-assed double standard. Tim comes off looking especially silly in this video.
 
Evilnemesis8 said:
There's no "lacking awareness" Greg Miller in particular knows exactly what he's doing. The man graduated from one of the better journalism universities in the country. He's been taught all about the ethics in journalism. But he's chosen the bag over that, this isn't the first time and certainly won't be the last time. The epitome of access journalism.
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I'm talking about in the video. Blessing literally had to be stopped by Tim from being hypocritical over the Suicide Squad leaks. Like he lacked awareness. Of course Greg Miller knows what he's doing. He's gotten to where he is because of it lmao.

Dardan Sandiego said:
The irony of KF's stance on this is that a lot of the info in the link directly relates to Sony/PlayStation corporate. It's valuable information that would help their audience understand this industry more. Which they would know if they treated this like professional journalists instead of applying some half-assed double standard. Tim comes off looking especially silly in this video.
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There are actually really good bits about financials especially with how Insomniac views AAA games and "mid-tier" games. I think we still as gamers don't quite understand how expensive game are and there are good bits to help educate us.
 
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I think KF are fine. Like they said, there is nuance to it and they even said they don't think they're right as it's hard to say what is wrong or right in a situation like this.

That said, they should have been better about the thumbnails, and the "speech" at the beginning of yesterday's show was a bit much. But the actual conversation they had about the leaks during the show was fair.
 
JorgenRaft said:
I think KF are fine. Like they said, there is nuance to it and they even said they don't think they're right as it's hard to say what is wrong or right in a situation like this.

That said, they should have been better about the thumbnails, and the "speech" at the beginning of yesterday's show was a bit much. But the actual conversation they had about the leaks during the show was fair.
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More like they realized that they've twisted themselves into pretzels once Blessing brought up the Capcom stuff. Tim talking about the human element and in the same breath downplaying the Capcom leak as "not nearly as damaging", which is just categorically wrong, gives the entire game away.
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
More like they realized that they've twisted themselves into pretzels once Blessing brought up the Capcom stuff. Tim talking about the human element and in the same breath downplaying the Capcom leak as "not nearly as damaging", which is just categorically wrong, gives the entire game away.
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Right, though it seems this gave them some perspective for the future considering they're closer with folks at Insomniac and this hit closer to home for them. So I imagine they'll handle leaks that include and personal information differently in the future. If they don't, then yeah that would be a big fuck up for them.

With the "not nearly as damaging" part I assumed they were talking about the larger time frame of Insomniac's future leaking compared to Capcom's (as well as the actual Wolverine game itself becoming available in some form). Not sure if that was clarified one way or the other in the show, nor do I personally think it'd be an excusable factor anyways since they were both very large regardless.
 
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JorgenRaft said:
Right, though it seems this gave them some perspective for the future considering they're closer with folks at Insomniac and this hit closer to home for them. So I imagine they'll handle leaks that include and personal information differently in the future. If they don't, then yeah that would be a big fuck up for them.

With the "not nearly as damaging" part I assumed they were talking about the larger time frame of Insomniac's future leaking compared to Capcom's (as well as the actual Wolverine game itself becoming available in some form). Not sure if that was clarified one way or the other in the show, nor do I personally think it'd be an excusable factor anyways since they were both very large regardless.
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They both say that if this had happened to Sony/PlayStation proper they would have "covered the fuck out of it". (Which doesn't even make sense because that might also affect Insomniac or any of the other studios.) I guess we'll see how they justify it then if it happens.
 
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