The most anticipated game of the year, Death Stranding, Even before the exit was in the center of the scandal. According to rumors, one particularly impatient employee "M.Video »I pulled a copy of the game from the warehouse and launched it on his home console until the official release. A Sony , In turn, I found out about this – and fined the retailer for one million rubles.
Of course, Death Stranding is far from the first game that ahead of time fell into other people's hands. We decided to recall ten loud leaks that the publishers delivered the most troubles.
Resident Evil 6
The most controversial part Resident Evil The Poles almost threw the release. Exactly a month before the release of several discs with the game for PlayStation 3 appeared on ebay – they were laid out there by the seller from the city of Poznan. At first he asked them for 2000 zlotys (€ 478.8 at the rate of 2012), but later he raised the price to 4999 (almost € 1200).
As Capcom said then, copies were intended for the German rating commission and, apparently, were stolen. On this occasion, the publishing house even began an internal investigation, but it did not lead to anything. However, this leak did not prevent the Resident Evil 6 from showing good sales. Yes, they were worse than the creators predicted initially, but several decorated discs were hardly the fault of this.
UNCHARTED 4: A Thief’s End
The desire to weld on an exclusive product until the official start of sales sometimes makes people go to radical measures. For example, in April 2016, in the UK, unknowners robbed one of the Sony trucks, which drove discs with fresh Uncharted 4. It was planned that it will appear on the shelves only on May 10.
It was not possible to catch the raiders in hot pursuit of the raiders, but later one of them lit up on the same ebay where he began to sell the prey. Although the offender was eventually held accountable, the spread of the stolen disks could not be stopped. Then, in the official PlayStation 4 Blog, the head of Sie Worldwide Studios Suhai Yoshida turned to fans of the series waiting for the game, asking not to buy discs until the official release date, so as not to encourage robbers with money. He also warned that in connection with the incident, spoilers for the plot may appear on the network.
Total War: Warhammer II
The van with copies of this game was also robbed, and a little less than two weeks before the start of sales. However, this time the criminals encroached on the holy and appropriated not just discs, but boxes with a limited publication Total War: Warhammer II – ** The Serpent Gold Edition.** Each of them included an artbook, a disk storage, exclusive guide, stickers, a paper map of the Warhammer world, a puzzle sphere carved from an ivory of a totem and a flash card with an electronic library of Black Library. Only 7,000 copies were made of such sets, some of which were in the hands of the attackers.
After the incident, the Director of the Total War brand Rob Bartolom said that all the players who pre -order on The Serpent Gold Edition will receive it anyway. And he publicly warned the abductors that the game would still not start earlier than 8:00 on September 28, 2017, when he officially goes on sale.
Until this day, the thieves have not shown themselves. Apparently, they did not want to give themselves themselves in the same way as their colleagues from the cases described above.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
The situation fell into a similar situation and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which before the start of sales was stolen at least twice.
The first case occurred a week before the release-on November 1, 2011, one disk with PC version disappeared from the warehouse in California. And this could already be considered a big problem for Activision, if just a couple of days later something was much more grandiose: as in the previous two cases, an armed raid was completed on a van loaded with the game with the game.
The car was in one of the suburbs of Paris and had to store 6,000 copies, but all of them were abducted by criminals, who were never found. Note that 6000 disks are approximately 1/5000 from the total number of physical copies of COD: MW3, which were sold out in the end.
Call of Duty: Wwii
However, there is a legend that the theft of new parts of Call of Duty before their official exit is a kind of PR campaign, which occasionally attracts attention to the project for the very start of sales. How true it is – we do not take the judge, but in October 2017, two weeks before the release Call of Duty: Wwii , an American who sold disks with her on ebay was caught. In one copy, he asked $ 45.
An entrepreneurial guy was detained right in his car when he was waiting for a potential buyer. In it, in addition to COD: WWII, discs with other games were also found. As the police established during the investigation, the copies that the detainee traded were stolen from the Sony factory. But how they came to him, it was not possible to find out: he himself never worked there and was not familiar with any of the employees. The investigation developed the version that the thief had accomplices-intensers with whom he shared the revenue, but she was never found confirmation.
Ultimately, a cunning American was accused of theft and copyright violation.
Kingdom Hearts III
And in the case of Kingdom Hearts III It was no longer a truck or a factory, but a warehouse of the Walmart store, where the disks with the game arrived a month before the release. The attacker stole several copies for the Xbox One, which immediately began to sell through Facebook.
He was quickly found and arrested, but by that time he still managed to sell a couple of copies. True, they did not begin to select the purchased copies of the players – and this, in turn, strained those fans of the series who honestly waited for the start of sales. As a result, messages addressed to the owners of the stolen discs began to appear on the network with requests to refrain from spoilers. And many Internet resources, including even Reddit, promised mercilessly banning anyone who will decide to tell about their passage Kingdom Hearts III ahead of time.
No Man’s Sky
“Sean Murray, if you are watching this, then I am M *** to, I'm sorry,” one of his streams began with these words No Man’s Sky Reddit user with Daymeeuhn nickname. And all because he bought a disk with a game two weeks before the release for $ 1250. And, having scored on all ethics, he began to publish screenshots and even gameplay rollers on the Web. At the same time, the pirate noted that it was disappointed with the purchase. The game seemed boring and unfinished to him.
When Sean Murray himself found out about what happened, the head Hello Games , He asked the owner of a duckling copy not to touch her to the release. The developer assured that Daymeeuhn will not be able to experience the sensations that the creators planned to give players. And the reason for this is a large renewal of the first day. However, this request did not affect the situation in any way. As the promised patch did not affect the impressions of the players.
Assassin’s Creed: Director’s Cut Edition
Case s Assassin’s Creed: Director’s Cut Edition -This is the situation when the leak did not occur due to someone's self-interest, but even vice versa-due to generosity. One of the employees of the company Akella , engaged in the localization and distribution of the game in Russia, received a disc with beta version two months before the release. He told about this to his friend, a student of Moscow State University, who, of course, asked to give a new product, assuring that he himself would never tell anyone about it.
Of course, the same night he leaked the image of the received disk into a local network-along with all the critical mistakes and shortcomings inherent in beta versions. In the morning, the game surfaced on all torrent trackers. After that, Akella attracted the employees of the then-militia, who eventually found the culprit and arrested right in the office. He was fired from the company, and the Pirate friend received two years conditionally.
Doom 3
A similar case took place with Doom 3, which at the time of exit looked just amazing. It is because of the desire of developers to boast of how the project looks, and a leak of the first three levels of the game occurred.
After the studio ID Software brought the alpha version of Doom 3 to E3 in 2002, company ATI Technologies accidentally recorded it on one of the disks designed to demonstrate the abilities of her video cards. And then someone pulled this disc-and, of course, decided to share its contents with the entire Internet. As a result, fans of the series were able to try one of the most anticipated shooters of the beginning of the zero two years before its official release.
After this incident, ID Software broke off relations with ATI and entered into an affiliate agreement with its direct competitor – NVIDIA.
Manhunt 2
Problems Manhunt 2 began long before the final release. For a long time after the announcement, not a single commission of the world wanted to give her an age rating below 18+. Because of this, the path to the Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft console was ordered for her: they do not release games with this rating.
At some point Rockstar even tried to achieve a reduction in age qualification in court, but nothing came of Bets.io Casino. To get the treasured 17+, the company had to cut and retouch numerous scenes of cruelty and violence with which the game abounded.
Having finally reached the desired rating, the authors of the project breathed a sigh of relief. But they did not have to rejoice for long: right before the release, in the fall of 2007, one of the employees of Sony assigned a copy of the game for the PlayStation 2 uncensored. In the future, he posted it on the Internet, where the owners of hacked consoles were able to download the militant. The cadres of torture and brutal murders that scattered over the network only excelled the scandal around Manhunt 2, securing the status of the most hated game from Rockstar.
Of course, one dozen list of pre -streaming leaks is not limited. The stronger the excitement around the game, the more people who are ready to even endure the law in order to be the first to feel the novelty. But, as cases with Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed show, the risk is not always justified. Moreover, such a risk. And certainly not a single game is worth it to lose his job or even go to jail.
