People who actually work at their job properly don't spray out information in the first place.
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Why aren't there leaks for everything?
- Thread starter DrKelpo
- Start date
People who actually work at their job properly don't spray out information in the first place.
This, i've been working as a tester for a company since 2017 and they were really strict with all the NDAs and security reasons.
People who never worked on anything are really clueless and they think leaking a game is good and perfectly fine.
i think it's pretty fair to say that some of the secrecy around development in the games industry is entirely unneeded, and i hope that it goes away.
Leaks imo are way more exciting than official reveals, especially when the reveals take fucking ages to actually happen. Like take Halo Infinite, we're probably 7 or 8 months from release and we know literally fuck all about it apart from it takes place after Halo 5 (durr) and we've gotten 2 shitty cutscenes that mean fuck all if you only care about MP. A leak would be so exciting now but instead we're probably not gonna get shit for a while even though we should have had the beta for it by now if it was supposed to be an actual meaningful beta.
Also this! No one outside direct colleagues have any clue about what the project is I am working on right now, not even my mom knows! People in the industry generally don't blab their mouth to random friends. Its not just out of fear of getting caught or sued, its mostly about respect towards my colleagues. Games get cancelled because of leaks and no way would I want to risk the lively hood of any of my colleagues who might get laid off because of a cancelled project.
Its not, for reasons excellently laid out by elenarie earlier in this thread
I don't work in the industry, but in another where the risks and consequences are also present and harmful.
Just to make it absolutely clear and because some people replying seem almost a bit offended by this thread... I totally get how terrible and crushing leaks can be for the people working on the project and I in no way meant to claim people should leak more or anything like this. It was just an honest question about the reality and the risks of projects this size.
This is pretty much what I meant when I mentioned friends and family. I didn't mean people intentionally want to harm friends and relatives in the industry by passing on information further, but given the number of people involved there is the risk of these informations getting spread... and each person along the line will care less and less where it originally came from and what it means for the people at the source.
Thanks for the hypothetical!
I guess I don't realize how event-based this industry is compared to film, movie goers just care about the film coming to their theater, trailers, and maybe Comic Con or whatever, and games people well, you explained it.
Yup
Professionals have enough sense to not provide detailed specifications of confidential products to their friends or family. Dropping vague hints about stuff over a beer is something that happens somewhat commonly, and that's why you usually have rumors about stuff in advance. However, you don't accidentally give away product specs or model numbers, because it is obviously over the line.
In any case, if the information has to go through multiple layers of people before it is posted online, it's like a game of telephone; by the time it gets to the end, it's usually distorted enough that it is hard to tell whether it was ever based on a real leak or if it was just something someone made up.
As big as the industry is, it's also small enough and connected enough that your reputation travels with you. I can tell you that a lot of the things I know within the industry comes from how interconnected everyone is.
Even my old job, working at a third party QA outsourcing studio, meant I have industry secrets that I'll likely keep to myself for the rest of my life, including major unannounced games, games that were in prototype phases that required testing/market research and games that were far along and were cancelled.
Not to mention actual friendships you build with people all over the industry that you won't want to betray. If I leaked something from a project friend A is working on, friends B, C, D and E that work in the industry will be much less likely to give me information or even trust me.
Edit: The above is also why it's generally way less damaging relationship wise to confirm a leak or say "I heard this too" after someone else or multiple other people leak it, because you aren't the source and people generally won't get as mad at you.
Even my old job, working at a third party QA outsourcing studio, meant I have industry secrets that I'll likely keep to myself for the rest of my life, including major unannounced games, games that were in prototype phases that required testing/market research and games that were far along and were cancelled.
Not to mention actual friendships you build with people all over the industry that you won't want to betray. If I leaked something from a project friend A is working on, friends B, C, D and E that work in the industry will be much less likely to give me information or even trust me.
Edit: The above is also why it's generally way less damaging relationship wise to confirm a leak or say "I heard this too" after someone else or multiple other people leak it, because you aren't the source and people generally won't get as mad at you.
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i'm not making an argument for people leaking more about the games they're working for, as it stands i quite understand why that hurts and is disappointing to devs when they've worked in secrecy on something for potentially years. what im making an argument against is devs necessarily working in secrecy at all. other industries are more open about what is being currently made. perhaps there are specific reasons that games industry is different.
It's pretty simple: there's generally a lot more competition within the video game industry, especially with the rise of Games As A Service. Marketing 101 states that you generally want announcements to have an impact, so that is generally why game companies hold back on announcements until they have a chunk of something to announce. If companies just announced very small bite sized bits of information for their big reveals, a lot of them would be forgotten about two to three weeks later because of how often games come out.
The video game industry is also more secretive due to circumstances, but still comparable to both TV and film in terms of pace and strategy. However, both of those industries have to contend with set leaks that they need to get ahead of, hence things like unveiling the new Batman costume prior to it leaking so that WB could control the message. The video game industry is also more susceptible to cancellations and greatly altered products from first starting a project to completion, and it's generally good practice not to announce things you can't guarantee will be in your game.
Edit: Also, don't think the video game industry is super unique. My company for instance (a software product that many industries use, including the video game industry) doesn't announce new versions publically until the day they release. While it could leak prior to our announcement, our timing allows us to blitz the market onc we release in a way that tends to be very successful for us.
There's certainly vast issues in regards to transparency within this industry. The fact that even finding retail sales information for many major regions is becoming more and more difficult is telling.
1- most of the assembling is automated
2- most generic workers knows nothing about the technical detail
3- those that knows and are in the production probably cares too much about their high paying jobs to risk loosing it
There are, which if you read elenarie's post you would start to understand, which is one part of it.
The other part is the fickle nature of game development.
One part is that projects get cancelled ALL THE TIME! in various states of development. I can easily say, for any project that gets made, 5 will be cancelled (conservative number) and not only for reasons that involve quality of the project. Sometimes projects get pulled because it simply wasn't the right time to do it, lack of publisher interest. A deal being shattered because of a leak, or hundred other different reasons.
Another part involves the way a game project evolves over time. Often it starts out as a totally different beast and slowly transforms into the end product. Its a roller coaster ride, and imagine the outrage of every decision being made if this process was public. There are always 50 % that like it, and 50 that don't, then as a developer, in which direction do you turn? A more open development means less creative and risky decisions. Gamers are notoriously bad game designers.
There was a twitter thread from devs about mistakes made during development that briefly affected their products. People reacted with disdain.
No they're not.
Banned from the industry, losing your position when you & your family depends on it...
Are you under 18?
The thing is that game development is transparent, places like GDC exist for a reason, and the fact of the matter is that gamers aren't genuinely interested in the nitty gritty of game development. Frankly it seems like there's a bigger interest in having more info of in production products to fuel misinformed speculation if anything else.
My old job running at home beta tests actually had us sit down with clients and point out which parts of their game and were likely to leak. Our advice always was (and still is to this day) that our clients announce everything contained within the chunk we were going to test in advance so that it did not leak and so that they could control the message.
So announcements to prevent leaks are a thing too!
So announcements to prevent leaks are a thing too!
I'm working in the tech industry and there are strict NDAs on the general company level. Also, everything is being categorized in confidential, secret etc. information. So secret information is only available to certain people. On a personal level, yes, you can leak stuff. But there is always the risk of being caught and the consequences are serious.
And most people don't see any benefit in leaking stuff, honestly most of my colleagues are happy to not think about work stuff outside of the company and are not even thinking about leaking anything.
Also, most people know what info will leak and adjust their messaging accordingly.
And most people don't see any benefit in leaking stuff, honestly most of my colleagues are happy to not think about work stuff outside of the company and are not even thinking about leaking anything.
Also, most people know what info will leak and adjust their messaging accordingly.
Potentially sacrificing the livelihood of you and your family for a couple internet cool point ? Seems like a smart move.
Also when you know how much work and effort is the foundation to be able to deliver these kind of reveals and announcements, you are less likely to spoil the fun for people that worked on it for years - especially if you are part of the team or a party that will benefit from said announcement.
Also when you know how much work and effort is the foundation to be able to deliver these kind of reveals and announcements, you are less likely to spoil the fun for people that worked on it for years - especially if you are part of the team or a party that will benefit from said announcement.
One of the bigger reasons for secrecy is that it seems to be much, much easier to "copy well" in video games than it is in film. And successfully replicating the unique selling points of a product can totally undercut the success of that product.
See: Fortnite stealing the show from PUBG.
It's hard for me to even imagine an equivalent scenario in film?
So I'd say "trade secrets" aren't quite as important to film as they are to video games.
Same thing is true of all software, really. Features are copyable.
See: Fortnite stealing the show from PUBG.
It's hard for me to even imagine an equivalent scenario in film?
So I'd say "trade secrets" aren't quite as important to film as they are to video games.
Same thing is true of all software, really. Features are copyable.
I think that the platform holders have gotten smarter about folding in, read NDA'ing, more people from news sources that would be credible, such as gaming websites, than in the past. The result is only unreliable sources are providing leaks and so people treat it with skepticism. I am sure, given the range of predictions (ie 9-13 TF), that the PS5 information is out. You just don't know which is accurate.
This.
5 min of fame isn't worth life time of your career, even if it's just assembling things, you can & will get blacklisted from the industry.
It's typically an incredibly stupid thing to do.
You went to school studying something and worked hard to land a job in an industry that you like.
Let's throw all that away for some internet fame.
Most people aren't dumb enough to do that.
On top of that, a lot of things like specs are subject to change while they're still in the works. You could probably ask most people working in the actual offices that are developing the next consoles and most of them wouldn't be able to give you exact numbers. Only the people who actually decide those numbers and the ones who test/benchmark them know those things.
You went to school studying something and worked hard to land a job in an industry that you like.
Let's throw all that away for some internet fame.
Most people aren't dumb enough to do that.
On top of that, a lot of things like specs are subject to change while they're still in the works. You could probably ask most people working in the actual offices that are developing the next consoles and most of them wouldn't be able to give you exact numbers. Only the people who actually decide those numbers and the ones who test/benchmark them know those things.