I wish it didn’t take federal crimes to see video games mid-development

polygon.com:

The recent Insomniac Games hack saw over a terabyte of the Spider-Man developer’s data illegally distributed online after it refused to pay a $2 million ransom to the Rhysida ransomware gang. The leak includes employees’ personal information, which means developers are not only experiencing the heartache of seeing their works-in-progress stolen and uploaded, but also, they just got doxxed. It doesn’t get worse than that. And I wish it didn’t take such drastic and devastating measures to get a look behind the curtain at in-development AAA games.

Over the last few years, criminal intrusions into the digital bowels of some of the biggest and most beloved video game studios in the world have provided us with details on internal projects long before studio public relations departments were ready to share official news. A breach of Capcom’s security in 2020, for example, was how most folks learned that long-anticipated games like Street Fighter 6, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and a Resident Evil 4 remake were waiting in the wings.

Leaks are a contentious subject. While I don’t have much sympathy for a multinational corporation’s bottom line or its best-laid, drip-feed advertising plans, I totally get why developers banging out animations or environments wouldn’t necessarily want that labor revealed before it’s finished. Video games aren’t just products for mass consumption, they’re art — and I can only imagine how crushing it must feel to have your art ripped away from you and put on display before you’re ready to share it.

But as someone who cares about games, I’ve always been captivated by how and why the things we play work the way they do. Seeing footage of Insomniac’s talented team working out not only major gameplay mechanics but