On December 12th, a ransomware hacker group named Rhysida revealed that it had been able to get access to 1.67 terabytes of data from one of Sony's game studios, Insomniac Games, known for Ratchet & Clank, Spider-Man, and many other prolific titles. Rhysida demanded that Insomniac Games pay a 50 Bitcoin ($2 million USD) ransom, or face having tons of internal data and private files leaked onto the internet. When the deadline passed without the ransom having been paid, the hacker group followed through on their threat, uploading the nearly 2TB of data they had illegally obtained, for anyone to download.

Information included in the leak ranges from sales data, Insomniac's projects through 2035, company emails that discuss other unannounced titles from fellow Sony developers such as Guerrilla Games and Bluepoint Games, in-development footage, design documents, licensing agreements, legal documents, and even employee data, including passports, phone numbers, and home addresses.

The documents show that following the release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Insomniac has plans for a Wolverine game, which we already knew from Sony's 2021 Showcase. However, it also reveals that the studio has further Marvel games it plans to work on, including a dedicated Venom game, a Spider-Man 3, a new Ratchet & Clank, an X-Men video game, and two brand new IPs. There's plenty of gameplay and concept art leaked, but most notably, an entirely playable PC build of the game has leaked as well.

Insomniac's Venom game is set to be titled Venom: Lethal Protector, and will bridge the gap between Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3. You'll be able to play as Venom, as well as the other Spider-Men, against an enemy named Carnage. It'll be an 8-10 hour singleplayer game, according to the pitch documents.

Not only is there a playable build of Marvel's Wolverine, but there's also an incredibly early dev build of the new Ratchet & Clank game, showing a glimpse of what the project might become eventually.

We can see from the sales data that the PC ports of Sony games that Horizon Zero Dawn performed the best out of all the Sony-published games on Steam, with 3.3 million sales, while the recent Spider-Man PC port has already sold 1.3 million copies.

Other data on upcoming games includes the name of Horizon series developer Guerrilla Games' new project. Titled Hunter's Gathering, leaked documents show that this will be an online multiplayer take on the Horizon series.

One of the slides from the leak shows PlayStation's approach to "industry threats", such as Microsoft's buyout of Activision Blizzard. To Sony, Microsoft's plans to build a mobile gaming storefront, as well as the prior juggernaut of a storefront that Battle.net is, are a problem, as it shows that Sony is behind the times in both the mobile and PC gaming market. For them, a premium sales model is their "central approach". They also see that free-to-play games with high quality gameplay are unsustainable, even with subscriptions. From Sony's point of view, there is no perfectly unified experience that merges PC, console, and mobile together, despite Microsoft's attempts.

This is one of the largest video game company hacks in recent times. While CD Projekt Red, Capcom, and even Nintendo have seen breaches and data uploaded online, it rarely offers this much insight into a develoer's future projects and internal information. Sony has commented on the hack, but only in the manner of stating that they're aware a cyber-security issue is ongoing at Insomniac Games.

 

[GengarsGhostlyGiggles]

If that was true, then it would get quickly taken down despite it not having being released yet. Taking source code that has been leaked, creating your own build and distributing it without the authorization of said parties is one way to get into legal trouble. I think everybody knows this already.


The video game industry has gone from good to such a mess in 2023, to the point where your company's reputation will plumet, just like with Fntastic.

when has laws ever stopped autistic nerds ?

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

i read the entire leaks on reddit.. its a dumpster fire lmao, if you think your missing out; your not, for example, wolverine is gonna be mega woke, they changed characters nationality to his story - its gross and uncomfortable how they make it seem as though he was buddy, buddies with sabertooth the man that befriended him like a nut job to only kill the love of his life in front of him.. it gets worse.. also rip larry? i forgot this hoes name.. dang it um.. jane i think thats her name? yeah she got modernized .

for the spider man games.. its bland.. not interesting if i am being honest, i love spider man but insomniac is woke as heck... so i am just not gonna put any money at all nor time towards these peoples future projects, its not worth it, if you are in the same boat as me; not into the whole changes there doing to said beloved characters of comic books.
yeah it can be insomniac interpretation of these marvel heroes but its not gonna erase the fact that its a wattapad level of tumblr fiction . they did peter and mj dirty in the new game...i lost track on what the heck is it called or whatever installment it is.

anyway, anybody know when elden ring giant expansion gonna release?? lol.

No wonder I ignored you.

 

[DS1]

spider man and venom maximum carnage was a great game on the mega drive so im not sure what you mean lol and there will be no spider man on the venom game it seems, it will be a solo venom game and the enemy will be carnage kinda like the movie.

Sorry the article says this: “You'll be able to play as Venom, as well as the other Spider-Men, against an enemy named Carnage”. Maybe they are mistaken.

Also I played Maximum Carnage earlier this year, it wasn’t super fun but yeah maybe “suck” is too strong. You gotta remember that was the era of Turtles in Time and Streets of Rage - those games were super fun but the Spiderman one was a bit of a letdown.

Post automatically merged: Dec 23, 2023

I'm offended. Maximum Carnage is stupidly difficult, but it does not suck. The gameplay is solid, and the soundtrack is pure fire.

I don’t know, I played it earlier this year after watching a playthrough and wasn’t feeling it. Good to know some people enjoyed it.

 

[Gon Freecss]

Hacking Sony it's a Christmas tradition.

 

[RGP]

Damn. This year is the year of hacking every game company out there isn't it?

 

[Jayro]

Imagine having your dev files stored on a machine connected to the internet, instead of on a private offline network store. Fucking noobs...

 

[shunoia]

It's not like Insomniac has anything worthwhile anyways... Waste of Effort!

 

[ChronosNotashi]

It's not like Insomniac has anything worthwhile anyways... Waste of Effort!

Not Insomniac itself, no. But iirc, the leaked information did reveal insight into Sony's future endeavors, which allegedly includes plans to increase the cost of games again, from $70 USD to $80-$100 USD (as if the initial increase from $60 to $70 and the increase in PS+ rates weren't enough to satisfy Sony).