We already have a topic on leaks in gaming, but I want to talk about a specific aspect of it today: how leaking has been infecting modern gaming speculation. While speculating is fun, it's become commonplace for people to make fake leaks to gain public attention. These people are almost always proven wrong eventually and fade into irrelevancy. What are your thoughts on all of these fake leaks? Are you okay with them? Do you want them to stop? Have you ever attempted a fake leak? If it isn't evident above, I'm tired of all of the fake leakers floating around the internet nowadays. This is the reason I almost never believe leaks: we've had too many fakes. I think we, as gaming consumers, need to not pay them so much attention. It's understandable that people want the inside scoop and that gaming review and news companies want to be the first to reveal something, but if you don't feed a troll, it often leaves.
I’m with you Wizard. Fake leaks need to stop. I’m thinking of the one fake leak for Smash Ultimate that someone added fake fighters (like Geno and Shadow) to the banner and pretended they were real (and it was the one that happened right before Ken was revealed). People shouldn’t be so desperate for attention or desperate to make an entire community of fans angry/shocked.
This is why I wait for official confirmation or denial before posting about a leak. If it is not confirmed or denied by an official source, I am skeptical until it is. That said, there have been some fairly accurate leakers...
I remember reading an interesting theory once that a lot of fake leaks are actually perpetuated by developers themselves...honestly, I'd be inclined to believe that to some extent, as many of the more prominent leakers have hit-and-miss track records when it comes to accuracy, and sometimes there will be some truth in amongst all the rubbish from the same leaker. kingzell is all over the place when it comes to Nintendo Direct predictions, as a recent and reoccurring example. And if you look at it as a marketing ploy, it's actually pretty clever - reactions to leaks can help developers to gauge consumer interest without the expectation that they'll follow through on it, can be used to discredit and/or control leaks that happen that are outside of their control, and help them build up excitement to that official announcement...and generate outside interest, so more people will buy the game. Obviously this won't account for all leakers, and might account for a small percentage, or even none at all. But when you consider how accurate some leakers have been about announcements that have been made a few days later - right down the date, and the order of presentations, and so on - it's not outside the realm of possibilities that some of them might be authorised by the companies themselves. I certainly wouldn't put it past game developers to spread rumours about their own products to generate discussion and interest. I find it interesting, but I don't really put any stock in it until I see the official announcement. It's always nice when a leak or rumour you like the sound of turns out to be true, but I don't generally trust anonymous internet users claiming to have insider information.
Personally i just don't pay any attention to 'leaks' at all. As far as I'm concerned, they are nothing more than fan speculation that gets out of hand. Sometimes stuff does turn out to be true, but I'm pretty sure that most of the time its just coincidence that leakers happened to get 'some' of their speculation right. This viewpoint largely stems from seeing Super Smash Bros. 'leaks' that are pretty much just people saying who they want to get in and presenting it as if its really going to happen.
This. Im sure anyone who was paying attiention to smash might remember the grinch leaks. The leak (and the proof of the leaks) were so professionally made and the story at that time so convincing (and that too many things seemed to line up perfectly) that some thought there was no way people would go through this much effort to fake a leak, But it was fake after all once the final smash direct was over. If anything the grinch leaks teach a good lesson. Any leak can be fake, no matter what, even if the said leaks seem to all add up to the perfect storm.
The existence of “leaks” doesn’t bother me, but the reactions around it do. It seems like every game Youtuber or website has to report these as if they were actual headlines. I won’t doubt how much fun it can be to speculate, but taking a photoshopped image and acting like it’s real is just silly.
