Former Xbox Dev Insomniac Suffers Devastating Leak From Hackers

It doesn't matter the studio this is always a sad situation.
On the other hand, the business side of the leak is interesting, knowing that Spiderman 2 made 'only' $75 million of profit after costing $315 million to produce. X-Men game is on the way, releasing on PS and PC, although it looks like a GaaS model and all characters will be completely exclusive.

I feel horrible for the devs! Not only their entire slate, but personal info from the devs was leaked too! Sony needs a time out, I mean seriously. They need to sit down and make some serious changes.

@FraserG the hack itself was being reported last week. It's only today that the group responsible has leaked everything online.

Sony needs to patch that leaky ship. They are starting to get hacked more regularly lately.

Get on that cyber security, man.

It doesn't sound like anyone paid the hackers which is a win I guess.

The leapfrog document with their worries about ABK is pretty interesting, they seem pretty worried.

But you have to feel for the devs. Personal info leaked and a decade of reveal moments robbed from all the people who work so hard to make games for us.

Man, if I knew Sunset Overdrive was from them, I wouldn't have bought it. Hopefully back then they were another kind of developers and I end up liking it.

@BacklogBrad I worked at a company that had a ransomware attack a few years ago. The idea of paying was never considered. The bigger issue is that the hack locks all of the files that are taken. We lost about a month of work finding a stable backup and it took about another month to get all of the computers and systems back up and running. And this hack seems much more extensive, this could push them back even longer than that.

From a video game perspective, I've seen several things showing a roadmap that says Wolverine isn't coming out until 2026. That puts their reveal in Xbox-level early announcement territory.

Ratchet and Clank only sold 2.2 million copies, that's super low. Also didn't break even on the budget used.

The fact of the matter is for all the talk of console sales a lot of their games fail to meet sales expectations and with these bloated budgets they are gonna have to change at some point. it just isn't sustainable.

Also talks of increasing prices of games to $80. And you wonder why i love game pass so much. Not paying $80 a pop for these shorter games that are few and far between when I get dabble in the game pass buffet for much cheaper playing all those incredible games.

Xbox is simply built up better for the future and the roadmap looks great. Sony does not seem prepared for the future.

@Kaloudz the ABK deal has the potential to "leapfrog our current pillars", which are "already dated and behind the competition".

Alot more insight aswell. Eurogamer have a full article on it and the doc is easily findable on google

@themightyant That's a very interesting tidbit, thanks for mentioning it.

I guess this means it would be hard for MS to revive old Activision X-Men licensed games as remasters, even if they also were willing to remaster them for PlayStation?

Sucks because I was really hoping for a remaster (and sequel to) 2013's Deadpool.

This is why we can't have nice things!

Not going to mention the other titles in the spoiler, but Wolverine being expected 2026 is a big setback for Sony. What is PlayStation expecting for a big title this year? So far I expected Wolverine to be their big 2024 title. What will it be now? Death Stranding 2? They going to rely on third party deals and taking previously multi-plat announced titles in as second party exclusives? Remasters of even more PS4 games?

Microsoft is potentially going to have a couple of years to play catchup.

@Sakai maybe Jimbo wasn't lying when he said the ABK acquistion wouldn't allow them to recover.

The fact is MS is ALL in on gaming after having like 5 studios and no funding for decades. It was easy for them to be a punching bag. Now they are ready to invest BIG money and with Phil at the helm and Sarah Bond heading the Xbox division the future couldn't be brighter.

And yes, with Sony losing ABK marketing and such and canceling live service they cant survive on big budget games that you play once and are done with.

It won't work anymore. Guarantee game prices for them goes up again soon.

@Tharsman I'm surprised many expected Wolverine in 2024, i expected 2025 at the earliest seeing we only ever got a cgi trailer recently and nothing else.
And yes, Sony is going to rely on third party games like it seems they have been recently, with remakes/remasters built in. Guarantee there will be more soon.

Interested to see where the game industry is in 5 years.

This is 100% horrible for the staff who had info leaked. Not acceptable.

The “gaming” leak also shows Insomniac as a Marvel factory which sucks for their future too. But it was obvious as soon as Spiderman sold so much on PS4. Also (no spoilers but…) 18 seconds in to the Wolverine footage he is…. what a surprise rock climbing up a vertical surface just like Spiderman, God of War, Uncharted, Horizon etc etc. Do people actually find that fun? I really don’t.

The X-men deal shows Sony will never change in that regard. Xbox has to explain itself everytime it makes something exclusive but Playstation just does what it wants. Such a stupid bias this industry has.

@J_Mo_Money

we only ever got a cgi trailer recently

"Recently" was 2018.

Not a reply to you, and have not bumped into the documents myself yet, but perhaps the ratchet and clank game is closer than we think... those get announced within 9 months of release, usually. The Venom game could be akin to Miles Morales, but that still took 2 years from the release of the first Spider-Man, so expecting it before fall 2025 might be wishful thinking.

@Kaloudz Take that "concern" with a grain of salt.

From the little I have managed to see so far, their worry is not losing revenue or losing sales, their concern is that someone else can potentially sell more than them.

Their worry is someone else will perform competitively. This is one of the things I really dislike about Sony, they are not happy performing well, they are only happy if they can make sure they are #1 and everyone falls behind.

They also mention worries about mobile games (something they already should had been worried about) and PC games (something they again should had been worried about since their approach at PC sucks due to their PS5 exclusivity windows) and service games (something once more they have personally failed at and entirely relied on third parties to bring in the cash).

MS has had service games in their DNA nearly from the start, with Halo, Gears, Forza and XBox Live. Almost all their games have always had service in mind to a fault. They were always likely going to be ahead of Sony with internal service games, and always have.

@themightyant I'm sure the deal with Xbox has different clauses. MS would never sign a deal that requires a minimum number of sales when they know a huge chunk of their base will be playing the games on Game Pass.

6 million, at $70 per launch copy means $420 million in revenue associated with the games. So long as Marvel gets the minimum they expect for licensing, they likely not care about count. Even that is sketchy since 6 million might be lifetime sales, and not all copies will sell at $70.

If their concern is reach, and just want anything associated with their brands to reach 6 million users, then that will be met easily thanks to Game Pass.

Either way, I'm certain MS wont have to sell 6 million copies to make Disney happy with exclusivity.

@Tharsman I guess i should update my "recent" comment. But wasn't the wolverine reveal trailer in 2021, not 2018? That seems too long ago.

@themightyant you're specifically talking about Spider-man, which of course is going to sell well, and I'm sure God of War and the Last of Us are great too, but for every one of those there are games like Returnal, Ratchet and Clank, Destruction All-Stars, Death Stranding, Days Gone ect that don't. I also wasn't specifically talking about Insomniac, but Sony as a whole.

And even though Ratchet and Clank was early in the gen the console sales are way higher now and they are still only at 2.2 mil. The fact is they need to have games with long tails and recurring revenue. They also need to start putting games on PC WAY sooner and take that market seriously.

There is a reason Jim is gone, Connie Booth is gone, Bungie is a crap show, Last of Us Factions canceled ect. They need to look in the mirror and have a plan because as it stands right now they don't have a concrete roadmap for the future. Something is going on over there.

@InvaderFromSpace I doubt insomniac ever considered paying the hackers but it's always possible that someone else will. It does sound like an estimated 2% of the files were not leaked, leaving the possibility that they were purchased.

@themightyant I don't think my concern for them has to do with console sales, sales of some of their biggest games ect I think it's more the evolution of the industry as a whole and my own personal idea of what i would like to see maybe.
It's been a very "interesting" year for them to say the least and probably some recency bias since there's been some troubling things coming out from them basically since the ABK acquisition went through with some of the higher ups leaving and their uncertainty of what they want to do with live service games and just no clear plan for the future.
PS1 is my second favorite console of all time behind only the SNES and I love what they were back then but I don't know if it's an identity problem or knowing vs not knowing what to do because their business model might not work in 2023 like it did 20 years ago. But that's not for me to say, the market will dictate that in the future. Me, personally, I'm just spoiled by the game pass, play my games any and everywhere on console/pc/cloud and day and date for a cheaper price type thing that xbox has going.
Sony will never be that but I like that formula, it's easy on my wallet and I love the diversity and options that comes with that.
Cheers, brother!

@themightyant got Alan Wake 2 on discount so gonna see what all the fuss was about. Excited to jump in.

If Sony so concerned over the Xbox Activision deal? Then why not make spider-man, etc all multiplatform games? I'd buy them to play on Xbox.

Refuse to purchase a PS5 until a good, affordable wireless Xbox style controller is released. Find ps controller incredibly uncomfortable and absolutely detest shoulder buttons placement.

@themightyant watchu playing this holiday season? I just finished up Mario RPG remake (great game but definitely made easier by the triple attack and AoE for perfect hits).

@J_Mo_Money As far as I recall, they dropped both the teasers for Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine the same day.

Sunset Overdrive just recently squeaking out $567 in profit. And that includes PC

@themightyant

but also saw they said over 10 million players had played

Don't forget Death Stranding came to Game Pass PC.

@J_Mo_Money

They also need to start putting games on PC WAY sooner and take that market seriously.

This is a big one right here. Recently we heard noise that Xbox is actually more profitable than PlayStation, and a big part is likely that they are not limited by their console install base to sell units. Shipping games to PC day one gives them a huge budgetary advantage as it drastically increases their market reach, without necessarily feeding competitors.

PlayStation should start releasing their games on PC day one, AND they should have their own PC storefront. They still need those games on Steam, but having their own storefront is key to their PC profitability, even if just a small chunk of their players end up signing up for it, since this allows them to also sell third party games for a revenue share of those.

@themightyant Chained echoes, such a good game! I beat that in January i wanna say or last December. Great game. That's one of the only games i can remember that i switched to easy in the last area because the sky armor fights were getting far too hard for me. I wish you could have leveled up to make it easier instead of not really being able to grind in the game. Only gripe for me.
Dead Space Remake was also awesome. Debating about RoboCop after a price cut, ive heard good things about it.

@Tharsman Indeed. Watchu playing this holiday season my good man?

@themightyant Sea of Stars was my indie game of the year this year. Good length, perfect difficulty, and I even beat it twice to get the true ending and I almost never do that.

@Kaloudz It seems Sony miscalculated and thought Microsoft buying Activision would make people buy an Xbox but at the end of the day nobody cared, and I'm sure GamePass will still be the same price in 2030 and beyond.

@themightyant about that $567 figure, do note their royalty for that tile was 0%. I'm actually curious what the 567 was over, likely some accounting adjustment.

This is usual for a project that is outsourced instead of published. Like, if I was to go to a publisher with my IP and a half-done game seeking it to be published and marketed, I would expect a percentage share. If on the other hand the publisher paid for all development for day one, I could see a zero percent split, but also zero risk to the studio. It would be a "keep the bills paid for 3 years" kind of contract.

@J_Mo_Money I have not been playing much, been too busy with a lot of RL things. Need to still finish Starfield. My "need to play ASAP list" is AC Mirage, Robocop and Super Mario RPG Remake, but who knows when I'll get around to any of that.

How can some of the best programmers in the biz have such ***** IT? Not just Insomniac but all of em MSOFT Sony they all got ***** Cybersecurity blows my mind

@Tharsman Good thing about a lot of those games you mentioned is there aren't very long, around 10-12 hours or so (except for starfield and AC Mirage might be closer to 15). But they aren't overly bloated games, which is good!