What is the craziest video game leak of all time?

[Kung Fucius]

wasn't DC vs Mortal Kombat leaked years before it was announced, but no one believed the leak?

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I remember that thread on the old place. Some guy posted in a thread and leaked it, but no one believed him and the thread died. YEARS later after the game comes out, that guy bumps that 3 year old thread just to say, "I TOLD YOU SO!" and the posts he made in that thread were the only posts he ever made with that account. People were responding to the thread like normal for awhile until they realized the thread was about 3 years old and they realized what a crazy thread it was.

 

[PhantomKnight]

The funniest for me was the ps4 slim leak. Somebody managed to buy one and got Digital Foundry to come to their house to do an analysis, all before Sony announced the console.

 

[Metalgus]

Might not be technically a leak in the sense we know it today, but I remember being on an internet message bulletin board on Sierra Online's The ImagiNation Network around Jan 1996 when someone claiming to have sources close to Squaresoft in Japan posted about "Final Fantasy VII going exclusively to the Sony PlayStation. There are three main characters: one with spiky blonde hair and a sword almost as big as his body named Claude, a black guy with a mini-gun for an arm named Bullet, and a girl in pink and red with a staff named Eraith. The characters are polygonal like Tekken characters."
So many people (myself included at the wonderful age of 16) laughed the guy off the boards and screamed BULLSHIT from the mountain tops. He'd later return with a website address where he put a couple location screenshots (one, I'd be able to identify much later, specifically being a bar in Junon, another being the streets of Midgar during the bombing mission; neither screen had any characters/NPCs, just the pre-rendered assets). Still didn't convince any of us. There was no way Squaresoft would do that/Nintendo is home to the previous 6 FFs/yadda~yadda~yadda.
I think about two months later I got the newest issue of GameFan that 'revealed' FFVII for the Sony PlayStation. I ate crow... and committed myself to buying a Sony PlayStation. :D

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That's crazy. Do you know who that poster turned out to be?

 

[MatrixMan.exe]

Surely it's Bloodborne. There were no rumours about the game's existence beforehand and the screens just popped out of nowhere. This was ensued by two HUGE threads of hype, denial and speculation about how credible the leaks were, where it was PS4 exclusive etc.

Was an insane ride.

 

[Watchtower]

 

[Jaded Alyx]

Surely it's Bloodborne.

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I think a leak where a game was stolen via hacking the developer and distributed online so that people could play part of it, beats that lol

 

[TheJollyCorner]

That's crazy. Do you know who that poster turned out to be?

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No idea.
NickRox (Nick DesBarnes) from GameFan used to post on the board (he actually revealed an early October 1994 release for FFIII during the summer of '94 back when no one seemed to have a clue when the game was coming out), but unless he was posting under an alias as to not get in trouble I have no idea. The guy never came back to gloat, hah.

It might have been a guy named Yukiyoshi 'Ike' Sato, one of the first guys on the web to run a FFVII fan site in '96 that got a lot of early info through Japanese magazines, but I couldn't say for certain.

 

[PokémonSpears]

Not precisely the craziest, as it wasn't like out of this world information, but this year's Ben Afflek leak on Pokémon SwSh still baffles me at how did it have all that correct info, since back in May, localized names and everything.

Same with Sun and Moon's starters leaking through that conceptual art image months before release.

Or continuing with Sun and Moon, when all the Pokémon were leaked through the datamining of the DEMO, that was insane. But even more nuts the fact that they had officially revealed almost everything by then, so the actual leaked content wasn't that much at all.

 

[Uriah]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I remember people were skeptical of it being a real Deus Ex game. The leak actually generated positive interest in the game.

 

[Christo750]

Leaks that turned out to be true? For my money the Mario + Rabbids, plus all the Microsoft stuff coming to Switch.

Leaks that turned out to be fake, I'd say was the NX prototype and the sudden attention people paid to trees.

 

[Filipus]

FWIW, CBOAT wasn't a single person. It was a shared account the moderators would post under to relay information given to them anonymously by multiple sources.

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O wow, how did I miss this?
Those leaks were so fun.

 

[cw_sasuke]

They funny thing about the Rabbids leak was that it included the whole marketing strategy for the game ...lol.

 

[TheJollyCorner]

the RE3 leak yesterday was kinda funny... at least the circumstances of it, as a RE3 Remake shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
But a bot pulling images from an impending PSN page? lol

 

[Thera]

Mario + Rabbids was completely out of nowhere

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Definitively the craziest in the WTF category :

1. Leak = WTF laught
2. Officially announced = WTF this is true
3. Game launched = WTF this is actually a good game

 

[ss_lemonade]

What about the Playstation 3 Slim leak in a store in the Philippines being sold early? I believe this was a few months before the console was even announced.

 

[Tyaren]

I'm just glad the Shadow of the Colossus remake wasn't leaked to me. Apparently it had been leaked before, but I only found out after the show. So glad that insane surprise moment wasn't ruined for me. :)

 

[Japanmanx3]

The reason I joined GAF was due to the fever pitch Pre X1 and PS4 reveals. The days of CBOAT were the best. And I was online the night that ntkrnl started dropping mega bombs as well. I really miss that...

 

[LiK]

CBOAT was a legend

 

[Not Spaceghost]

The guy on a plane sitting next to a Ubisoft dev who leaked AC4 was pretty crazy

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I think it was actually Unity and no one believed the guy until it was actually revealed.

 

[Byvar]

That leak from 2007 or so where like every unannounced game Ubisoft was doing at the time got leaked from movie tie-ins to Assassin's Creed.

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Yep, this was one of the biggest leaks I remember. Ubisoft had a public FTP server that for a few days hosted a 2GB rar file full of art & videos for then-unannounced games including Prince of Persia 2008 and even some games that ended up never coming out. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/news210906ubisoft

 

[Psychotic_Mantis]

I lived for CBOAT leaks back in the day. I had no idea that it was a shared Mod account.

 

[MP!]

that metroid prime 4 leak...

I mean
Nintendo even had the logo for it

 

[TaterTots]

Half-Life 2 code leak. Eurogamer did a write up about it this year...it was actually published in 2011, but a good read.

The boy who stole Half-Life 2

 

[strife85]

Project Beast

 

[Spinosaurus]

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 will always be my answer for this just because the whole roster leaked immediately after announcement because all the renders were on site. People frantically typing up names on the URL to get them just for it all to culminate to Rocket Raccoon was too hilarious.

 

[EarlGreyHot]

Didn't DMC5 leak on here with a ton of info? That was pretty wild

 

[Josh5890]

I wasn't on Gaf at the time but I remember the PS3 Slim leak/rumors were nuts on the internet back in 2009.

 

[Tygre]

Half-Life 2 code leak. Eurogamer did a write up about it this year.

The boy who stole Half-Life 2

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Yeah, nothing beats the HL2 source code "leak"

It's like, imagine today somebody stole the source code for the FF7 Remake and started releasing videos and screenshots, then also revealed it wasn't anywhere close to done despite being due out in March, then the game got pushed back a full 12 months.

Oh, and then a year later the leaker gets snatched up by the FBI in a sting with the help of Tetsuya Nomura.

That's how crazy it was.

 

[Chrno]

for me it has to be Elden Ring. If I had seen that announcement trailer with no prior knowledge I would have went crazy.

 

[Charsace]

Half Life 2 source code leak and Doom 3 leaking and depressing a lot of people, forcing them to buy new video cards.

 

[Anth0ny]

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 will always be my answer for this just because the whole roster leaked immediately after announcement because all the renders were on site. People frantically typing up names on the URL to get them just for it all to culminate to Rocket Raccoon was too hilarious.

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Yeah this was another great one. The reactions to Rocket Raccoon in a pre-GOTG movie world were hilarious.

 

[funky]

The ntkrnl 2014 leaks.

At a time when CBAOT was out there stringing fools along for crumbs and typing like a idiot, this motherfucker comes in and leaks Xbox's entire lineup for the next 2.5 years in a few hours like it was nothing.

 

[awake4ages]

Smash Ultimate Grinch leak for me, even though it turned out fake.

what a crazy ride

 

[Deleted member 33533]

The Smash 4 roster leak where everybody was insisting it was fake because Shulk was a reskinned Little Mac

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I don't know what you mean, they look EXACTLY the same!

Spoiler

I'm just laughing imagining the person who went diving through tons of Smash 4 images to find one image that would "debunk" the leak. Like they just went through what must have been hundreds of images at that point, probably in the early hours of the morning on little sleep and been like "THAT'S IT!" on this random screenshot. That's some determination.

 

[samred]

Another vote for HL2.

That will change whenever someone gets around to leaking files for the Goldeneye Xbox 360 remaster that Rare finished and then shelved. Even if that takes over 20 years. (Unless everyone involved wises up and signs contracts to freaking release it.)

 

[DieH@rd]

HL2 source code theft

 

[Druffmaul]

The GIA leaked FFIX like a year before it was announced officially. It was very early design work and it wasn't known at the time if it was going to be the next proper FF, or some kind of gaiden or what.

 

[Deleted member 16657]

CBOAT was the name of an account on NeoGAF that would post all sorts of insider info, using obfuscated spelling and language to hide the sources (i.e. purposefully misspelling things and using weird grammar). It was played off like it was a single individual, but it was actually a dummy account the mods at NeoGAF used to relay information that would be passed to them in private through PMs, emails, etc.

They leaked a LOT of stuff about Microsoft in years past, to the point where Microsoft began purposefully seeding misinformation to certain employees to see what would "leak" out to try and figure out CBOAT's identity. but, since it wasn't an actual, single individual, the leaks never stopped, even when they figured out who one of the leakers was by giving him incorrect info.

Eventually they retired the account because people thought CBOAT was a magnet for drama.

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Wow I never knew this.

I thought CBOAT got banned because he posted a false leak, was it just planned by the mods running the account?

 

[Agni Kai]

Didn't DMC5 leak on here with a ton of info? That was pretty wild

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Yeah. I built an altar in my closet dedicated to Son of Sparda on that day. It was a crazy night I remember.

 

[MrNelson]

Mario + Rabbids was completely out of nowhere

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We're years removed from that and I still can't believe that game happened.

CBOAT

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CBOAT was probably my favorite part of the lead-up to this gen. Leaks are one thing, but having them delivered through all that nonsense made them more memorable

 

[jett]

So many people didn't want to believe the FF15, decrying it as a fake leak to make the game look bad.

lol

It was all true.

 

[Volcane]

I remember downloading the Doom 3 alpha leak, it took a couple days.

 

[Deleted member 52442]

This.

Here's a good article about the whole saga for anyone interested:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-21-the-boy-who-stole-half-life-2-article

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thanks. i would love to read articles/watch videos about all of these leaks tbh

 

[Arm Van Dam]

Was it ever confirmed that MS was hunting down ntkrnl after the leaks came out?

 

[Giga Man]

Mario + Rabbids was completely out of nowhere

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Leaking an entire powerpoint presentation was insane. You have to wonder who did it and why.

 

[Druffmaul]

I think it was actually Unity and no one believed the guy until it was actually revealed.

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Pretty sure several AC leaks like that one have been "official." I always suspected it, and then then when they joked about it in Watch Dogs 2, going as far as mocking Ubisoft employees for their incompetence, that more or less confirmed it to me. I just can't see them doing that if those leaks were legit. It's all part of their corporate-committee-engineered method of generating a hype cycle. For several years, like clockwork during spring, every AC got "leaked" in some buffoonish way like that ("Hi random stranger sitting next me on a plane. Do you like video games? Because I'm working on a huge one, and I'll show it to tyou right now, because I'm trying to get fired!") almost exactly 90 days before E3.

 

[mopinks]

Acid Ghost

still waiting for the official reveal

 

[Donizetty]

Everything about Nintendo NX leaks was fun.

 

[Knight613]

ntkrnl leaking Microsoft's entire E3 presentation months before E3 was pretty crazy.

 

[xir]

Bloodborne leak

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it taught me what a .webm is