Former Bungie lead counsel explains how the studio nailed one of Destiny 2's most infamous leakers
If you've ever wondered how videogame studios determine who's leaking their big secrets, a new Bloomberg interview with former Bungie general counsel Don McGowan offers some very interesting insights into how it's done.
«We had a situation with a content creator,» McGowan said. «We'd done a community day where we'd brought in a bunch of community content creators and opened up a stream. One of them took photos of his computer and released those, for clout. Not on his own name, just leaked them out, so he could get clout with the websites he was leaking them to.»
McGowan explained that there were 12 streamers on the call that was leaked, so Bungie started taking a closer look at all of them. «One of them had two computers, and one day he streamed from his other PC,» he said. «We saw the icons on the bottom of his screen were exactly the same ones as in one of the photographs. Alright, that's our guy. So we set up a call with him.»
The streamer in question denied being responsible for the leak, and said his roommate must have surreptitiously taken a photo of his screen. Bungie rejected that claim for two reasons, according to McGowan: «One, we don't care. Secondly, and more important my friend, no it wasn't.
»Because if you look at the angle of the camera, you can tell the camera was being held in the photographer's right hand. We can see the room you're in right now. Your door is to your left. So either your roommate came in, walked behind you to your right and took a photograph, and you didn't notice it—or you took the photograph yourself."
McGowan didn't name the streamer in question but shortly after the interview was published, Twitch streamer Ekuegan effectively confirmed that he was the leaker being referred to. Ekuegan was banned from Destiny 2 in 2023 as a result of what Bungie called "irrefutable evidence" that he was responsible for multiple Community Summit leaks; Ekuegan resolutely denied his guilt then, and he continued to do so in messages posted
Read more on pcgamer.com
