On December 12th, a ransomware hacker group named Rhysida revealed that it had been able to get access to 1.67 terabytes of data from one of Sony's game studios, Insomniac Games, known for Ratchet & Clank, Spider-Man, and many other prolific titles. Rhysida demanded that Insomniac Games pay a 50 Bitcoin ($2 million USD) ransom, or face having tons of internal data and private files leaked onto the internet. When the deadline passed without the ransom having been paid, the hacker group followed through on their threat, uploading the nearly 2TB of data they had illegally obtained, for anyone to download.

Information included in the leak ranges from sales data, Insomniac's projects through 2035, company emails that discuss other unannounced titles from fellow Sony developers such as Guerrilla Games and Bluepoint Games, in-development footage, design documents, licensing agreements, legal documents, and even employee data, including passports, phone numbers, and home addresses.

The documents show that following the release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Insomniac has plans for a Wolverine game, which we already knew from Sony's 2021 Showcase. However, it also reveals that the studio has further Marvel games it plans to work on, including a dedicated Venom game, a Spider-Man 3, a new Ratchet & Clank, an X-Men video game, and two brand new IPs. There's plenty of gameplay and concept art leaked, but most notably, an entirely playable PC build of the game has leaked as well.

Insomniac's Venom game is set to be titled Venom: Lethal Protector, and will bridge the gap between Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3. You'll be able to play as Venom, as well as the other Spider-Men, against an enemy named Carnage. It'll be an 8-10 hour singleplayer game, according to the pitch documents.

Not only is there a playable build of Marvel's Wolverine, but there's also an incredibly early dev build of the new Ratchet & Clank game, showing a glimpse of what the project might become eventually.

We can see from the sales data that the PC ports of Sony games that Horizon Zero Dawn performed the best out of all the Sony-published games on Steam, with 3.3 million sales, while the recent Spider-Man PC port has already sold 1.3 million copies.

Other data on upcoming games includes the name of Horizon series developer Guerrilla Games' new project. Titled Hunter's Gathering, leaked documents show that this will be an online multiplayer take on the Horizon series.

One of the slides from the leak shows PlayStation's approach to "industry threats", such as Microsoft's buyout of Activision Blizzard. To Sony, Microsoft's plans to build a mobile gaming storefront, as well as the prior juggernaut of a storefront that Battle.net is, are a problem, as it shows that Sony is behind the times in both the mobile and PC gaming market. For them, a premium sales model is their "central approach". They also see that free-to-play games with high quality gameplay are unsustainable, even with subscriptions. From Sony's point of view, there is no perfectly unified experience that merges PC, console, and mobile together, despite Microsoft's attempts.

This is one of the largest video game company hacks in recent times. While CD Projekt Red, Capcom, and even Nintendo have seen breaches and data uploaded online, it rarely offers this much insight into a develoer's future projects and internal information. Sony has commented on the hack, but only in the manner of stating that they're aware a cyber-security issue is ongoing at Insomniac Games.

 

[eriol33]

Most people see it as “why should I buy it again if I already beat it?”.

Kinda true, I bought the game on PS4 and still reluctant to make a purchase on steam

 

[spotanjo3]

Jeez. That sucks but I am glad that Ratchet and Clank is in the work. My best friend loved sequels games and he is going to be happy when I tell him that this is in the work.

 

[LightBeam]

I thought you were off base till I saw this article.

https://www.ign.com/articles/most-expensive-movies

I can't believe if cost $340 mill to make fast x. FML

It's mostly marketing I believe, seems crazy to have to spend THAT much for your game to sell
But it makes more sense than development costing THAT much, marketing is a wide term to describe having your game showcased on TV ads or boards or whatever all around the world

 

[Noctosphere]

It's mostly marketing I believe, seems crazy to have to spend THAT much for your game to sell
But it makes more sense than development costing THAT much, marketing is a wide term to describe having your game showcased on TV ads or boards or whatever all around the world

Yea, there is that, but there are also so much more production step in video games that are not present in movies.
Modeling, programming, puting everything together, testing, etc.. These steps are not presents in movies
However, pretty much all movies production steps are present in AAA gaming (animation, acting, reviewing, etc.)

Also, in video games, there are also "post-release" production steps, such as bug patching or DLCs. These cost a lot too

 

[Bladexdsl]

Jeez. That sucks but I am glad that Ratchet and Clank is in the work

same here those grinding stages on rift apart were fucking awesome

 

[LightBeam]

same here that those grinding stages on rift apart were fucking awesome

First time I see you not being sarcastic I think

 

[Bladexdsl]

First time I see you not being sarcastic I think

when a game is actually good and not the same shit remade rehashed crap or a big lame empty open world i will give it credit

 

[The Real Jdbye]

No source code? Meh.

 

[drazenm]

I think all these figures how much games cost to develop are overblown, seriously overblown. If there's no money laundering there, in movies, music industry, then there's nowhere.

What's the funniest about it all is how poorly staff are paid and they're the ones that do 99% of the actual work.

 

[GengarsGhostlyGiggles]

No source code? Meh.

it was released, people are fixing and patching the wolverine leaked data to make a demo.

 

[Lazyt]

is there a reason why everyone hacks sony? is it some kind of hate?

 

[zoogie]

is there a reason why everyone hacks sony? is it some kind of hate?

They took linux away from the PS3.
Nerds have thus blacklisted Sony for life.
No second chance, no forgiveness.

 

[ZeroFX]

No source code? Meh.

Lots

 

[Gamemaster1379]

is there a reason why everyone hacks sony? is it some kind of hate?

They're an easy target with their bad security.

 

[Viri]

I am surprised that Spiderman remastered sales is that low on PC given that the original PS4 sold more than 10 million.

Does that include bundles? Spider-Man was bundled quite a bit, and even had its own console variant.

Post automatically merged: Dec 22, 2023

is there a reason why everyone hacks sony? is it some kind of hate?

If your company has bad security, and does fuck all to improve it, you deserve to get hacked. lol

 

[HinaNaru Cutie]

i read the entire leaks on reddit.. its a dumpster fire lmao, if you think your missing out; your not, for example, wolverine is gonna be mega woke, they changed characters nationality to his story - its gross and uncomfortable how they make it seem as though he was buddy, buddies with sabertooth the man that befriended him like a nut job to only kill the love of his life in front of him.. it gets worse.. also rip larry? i forgot this hoes name.. dang it um.. jane i think thats her name? yeah she got modernized .

for the spider man games.. its bland.. not interesting if i am being honest, i love spider man but insomniac is woke as heck... so i am just not gonna put any money at all nor time towards these peoples future projects, its not worth it, if you are in the same boat as me; not into the whole changes there doing to said beloved characters of comic books.
yeah it can be insomniac interpretation of these marvel heroes but its not gonna erase the fact that its a wattapad level of tumblr fiction . they did peter and mj dirty in the new game...i lost track on what the heck is it called or whatever installment it is.

anyway, anybody know when elden ring giant expansion gonna release?? lol.

 

[SylverReZ]

it was released, people are fixing and patching the wolverine leaked data to make a demo.

If that was true, then it would get quickly taken down despite it not having being released yet. Taking source code that has been leaked, creating your own build and distributing it without the authorization of said parties is one way to get into legal trouble. I think everybody knows this already.

i read the entire leaks on reddit.. its a dumpster fire lmao, if you think your missing out; your not, for example, wolverine is gonna be mega woke, they changed characters nationality to his story - its gross and uncomfortable how they make it seem as though he was buddy, buddies with sabertooth the man that befriended him like a nut job to only kill the love of his life in front of him.. it gets worse.. also rip larry? i forgot this hoes name.. dang it um.. jane i think thats her name? yeah she got modernized .

for the spider man games.. its bland.. not interesting if i am being honest, i love spider man but insomniac is woke as heck... so i am just not gonna put any money at all nor time towards these peoples future projects, its not worth it, if you are in the same boat as me; not into the whole changes there doing to said beloved characters of comic books.
yeah it can be insomniac interpretation of these marvel heroes but its not gonna erase the fact that its a wattapad level of tumblr fiction . they did peter and mj dirty in the new game...i lost track on what the heck is it called or whatever installment it is.

The video game industry has gone from good to such a mess in 2023, to the point where your company's reputation will plumet, just like with Fntastic.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

is there a reason why everyone hacks sony? is it some kind of hate?

As others have said, it's mostly because of bad security. While Sony is brilliant at making hardware capable of displaying every single pore or wrinkle on a guy's face, they are...laughably pathetic at protecting private data in their servers - both in minimizing the risk of a breach, and in running damage control to minimize the impact of a breach.

Can't recall all the incidents and blunders, but one of the bigger ones I remember was in 2011 during the PS3 era, when the accounts of over 77 million Playstation Network users were compromised after Sony's servers were hacked over the course of three days (before Sony finally shut down the network to prevent further damage). It was one of the largest data security breaches in history, and resulted in the longest PSN outage to date, which lasted 23 days while Sony worked to update the PS3 firmware to avoid an immediate repeat.

 

[MikaTh]

View attachment 409835​

On December 12th, a ransomware hacker group named Rhysida revealed that it had been able to get access to 1.67 terabytes of data from one of Sony's game studios, Insomniac Games, known for Ratchet & Clank, Spider-Man, and many other prolific titles. Rhysida demanded that Insomniac Games pay a 50 Bitcoin ($2 million USD) ransom, or face having tons of internal data and private files leaked onto the internet. When the deadline passed without the ransom having been paid, the hacker group followed through on their threat, uploading the nearly 2TB of data they had illegally obtained, for anyone to download.

Information included in the leak ranges from sales data, Insomniac's projects through 2035, company emails that discuss other unannounced titles from fellow Sony developers such as Guerrilla Games and Bluepoint Games, in-development footage, design documents, licensing agreements, legal documents, and even employee data, including passports, phone numbers, and home addresses.

The documents show that following the release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Insomniac has plans for a Wolverine game, which we already knew from Sony's 2021 Showcase. However, it also reveals that the studio has further Marvel games it plans to work on, including a dedicated Venom game, a Spider-Man 3, a new Ratchet & Clank, an X-Men video game, and two brand new IPs. There's plenty of gameplay and concept art leaked, but most notably, an entirely playable PC build of the game has leaked as well.

Insomniac's Venom game is set to be titled Venom: Lethal Protector, and will bridge the gap between Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3. You'll be able to play as Venom, as well as the other Spider-Men, against an enemy named Carnage. It'll be an 8-10 hour singleplayer game, according to the pitch documents.

Not only is there a playable build of Marvel's Wolverine, but there's also an incredibly early dev build of the new Ratchet & Clank game, showing a glimpse of what the project might become eventually.

We can see from the sales data that the PC ports of Sony games that Horizon Zero Dawn performed the best out of all the Sony-published games on Steam, with 3.3 million sales, while the recent Spider-Man PC port has already sold 1.3 million copies.

Other data on upcoming games includes the name of Horizon series developer Guerrilla Games' new project. Titled Hunter's Gathering, leaked documents show that this will be an online multiplayer take on the Horizon series.

One of the slides from the leak shows PlayStation's approach to "industry threats", such as Microsoft's buyout of Activision Blizzard. To Sony, Microsoft's plans to build a mobile gaming storefront, as well as the prior juggernaut of a storefront that Battle.net is, are a problem, as it shows that Sony is behind the times in both the mobile and PC gaming market. For them, a premium sales model is their "central approach". They also see that free-to-play games with high quality gameplay are unsustainable, even with subscriptions. From Sony's point of view, there is no perfectly unified experience that merges PC, console, and mobile together, despite Microsoft's attempts.

This is one of the largest video game company hacks in recent times. While CD Projekt Red, Capcom, and even Nintendo have seen breaches and data uploaded online, it rarely offers this much insight into a develoer's future projects and internal information. Sony has commented on the hack, but only in the manner of stating that they're aware a cyber-security issue is ongoing at Insomniac Games.

wow this show's that sony really is only still a float because of hype. They really show a lack of understanding of the industry and how it works if they trully believe microsoft buying activision means battle.net on phones.

 

[Hassal]

As others have said, it's mostly because of bad security. While Sony is brilliant at making hardware capable of displaying every single pore or wrinkle on a guy's face, they are...laughably pathetic at protecting private data in their servers - both in minimizing the risk of a breach, and in running damage control to minimize the impact of a breach.

Can't recall all the incidents and blunders, but one of the bigger ones I remember was in 2011 during the PS3 era, when the accounts of over 77 million Playstation Network users were compromised after Sony's servers were hacked over the course of three days (before Sony finally shut down the network to prevent further damage). It was one of the largest data security breaches in history, and resulted in the longest PSN outage to date, which lasted 23 days while Sony worked to update the PS3 firmware to avoid an immediate repeat.

The breach didn't happen because of poor security, it happens because of stupid people inside the company.