Major spoilers for Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 2 hit the web in late April, and despite early rumors that the source was a disgruntled employee, the true story behind the leaks exposes a more sinister side to fandom.
How The Last of Us Part 2 got leaked
On May 3, reports emerged from Kotaku, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, and PixelButts (a QA tester with inside knowledge about the leak) revealing that a selected vulnerability left Naughty Dog hospitable hackers. “Hackers found a security vulnerability during a patch for an older Naughty Dog game and used it to urge access to Naughty Dog’s servers,” Schreier wrote on Twitter. “I think the footage that leaked is from devs playing an early build, most significantly, rumors of this being an act of protest by a contractor whose pay was robbed aren’t true.”
The Lord of Rings Part 2 leaks detected
Sony has identified the leakers of The Last of Us Part 2, who are determined to not be connected to either Naughty Dog or Sony Interactive Entertainment. However, the damage may have already been done, as logging on is like entering a minefield for gamers trying to avoid The Last of Us 2 spoilers. Sony and Scheier’s comments were both vague in how they presented the knowledge, but PixelButts’ and Kotaku’s reports provide a more specific context to about how the leak happened. They both revealed that a hacker group found how to access Amazon servers that stored data for games like Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and therefore The Last of Us.
The group managed to require 1 TB of knowledge from a server for The Last of us before the top of March, and while PixelButts made Naughty Dog conscious of the vulnerability in February, access to those Amazon servers wasn’t fixed until “on or before April 30.” This gave the leaker quite enough time to urge what they needed from the server and reveal it to the general public. PixelButts told Kotaku that while this hacker group is certainly connected to the leak, “their circle is more just Naughty Dog enthusiasts that like development content from their games, instead of malicious actors.”
We don’t currently know what motivated the leaker behind The Last of Us Part 2‘s leaks, but the conjecture we’re left with supported comments from PixelButts is that they are associated with this group of fans. Leakers like this seem keen on sowing a range of disappointment amongst the fans by leaking story details to the general public. We saw such major leaks with major Disney movies and even with Game of Thrones. Instead of letting creators tell their stories within the way, they were intended, plot details are leaked with the aim of aggravating fans and destroying their enjoyment of the film, TV show, or computer game.
The narrative becomes that for any fans who don’t enjoy where a franchise goes, they will spoil the experience for everybody else in this manner. It represents the foremost sinister sides to fan culture.
The Last of Us Part 2 New Release date
The Last of Us Part 2, which was alleged to release on this 29th of May, is now delayed to the 19th of June. It will exclusively release on Sony PlayStation 4. While the additional three weeks of waiting won’t appear to be much, it means players trying to avoid spoilers will get to keep dodging them for nearly seven more weeks. Till then take a look at what the writer, Neil Druckman has a say regarding this.