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Highlights
- YouTube is looking into employees accessing private game materials, potentially causing leaks before official announcements.
- Leaks in the gaming industry can be damaging, with titles and games appearing online before developers intend.
- Tighter cybersecurity measures may be needed to prevent future leaks from happening, especially if they stem from within YouTube’s services.
YouTube is allegedly investigating multiple gaming leaks that have transpired over the last many months to determine if its employees are to blame. The recent leaks ahead of the PlayStation State of Play may be the latest of them.
Leaks can be devastating to the game industry, depending upon the severity of the leak. Everything from titles to entire games have made their way onto the internet before the developers have intended. Sometimes these leaks come from insiders working within a game developer or publisher group. In recent times, many game premieres see their trailers uploaded to YouTube in advance, which could be part of the problem according to new rumors.
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This may be giving YouTube workers with access to the backend early access to the titles’ existence, materials, and more, according to Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson. Henderson has stated that “from what he can gather,” YouTube has looked into two separate incidents in which employees have broken their contractual agreements by accessing the system’s backend, and presumably, accessing private uploads and materials tied to upcoming game announcements. Henderson suggests that a third investigation will likely be underway for the PlayStation State of Play leak.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem optimistic about Summer Game Fest doing any better, as he suggests that may end up leaking as well. While he didn’t specify which leaks have transpired in the past 18 months that could have been from YouTube, it’s likely that the GTA 6 trailer leak was one of them. The fact that he believes that the PlayStation leak could be from YouTube and more may be in the future seems to indicate that either YouTube hasn’t found the person responsible, or more than one person is leaking material from the site.
Leaks are Everywhere in Gaming
Unfortunately, leaks seem to be a fact of life at this point in the gaming industry. In recent times, game developers and publishers have been hacked, with materials being viewed and stolen outright. Even the notoriously litigious Nintendo hasn’t been immune, with games like Super Mario RPG leaking online before they’d officially launched.
Maintaining tight cybersecurity and limiting outside access can help to prevent these leaks, but if some of them are due to YouTube’s video hosting services, that could be a big problem for essentially every major game publisher, and one they don’t have much control over. If the rumors are true, hopefully YouTube will find the leakers soon. However, it’s likely that more changes are needed in order to prevent this from just happening again with other employees.