Like many, my first thought when I see GTA 6 a leak it was “damn.” The second thought was a memory of the protocols that occurred when there were leaks or security breaches, no matter how minor, when I worked in development: usually people would burst into the room with angry faces and demand that no one touch anything. The third thought was that Rockstar, the king of image and information flow management, would do it now. I remembered an episode from the movie “The Bourne Identity”, where the head of the CIA demands that the agency “raise everyone.” Everything, in this case, is a collection of killers, each with cool names and even colder intentions.
As far as I know, Matt Damon is not involved in this case, and Rockstar management did not send Clive Owen to have a philosophical conversation with the person responsible for this leak at gunpoint, as much as he would like to. However, the company is working with the FBI, so maybe I wasn't too far off the mark. In any case, the answer will be quick and comprehensive, as happened with the closest leak of Half-Life 2 to this. (And we all know what happened there)
The reasons for this answer are obvious. There is a huge financial component at play here. There are security issues related to the source code and other vulnerabilities that could cause the entire project to fail. And also the reputational damage that has already been done. Within seconds of the leak, the internet was filled with people disappointed in how it looked. That it looks like crap. What if this is what it looks like, then it will be a huge disappointment and, just quietly, what have the (lazy?) developers been doing all this time?
These were some of the clearer takes: at least the words made sense in order. Others seemed to just be shouted out into the universe with no regard for meaning or sanity, as opposed to reality as it is. So what is this reality? Basically, it's that I'm amazed at how video games come out at all, and that if you could see what all your favorite games looked like just three months before release, you would insist that what was done to complete them something magic magic.
I know this because since 2007 I have either worked directly on the games themselves or on high-profile franchises/brands (including Battlefield, Harry Potter, Burnout, Half-Life, Total War, and more) as a screenwriter. In this role, I saw them in a pre-release state, basically while a very nervous PR person begged you not to forget It Is Not Finished. In my current position, I have been consulting and advising on mechanics and modes for high-end releases. Regardless of my work in the industry over these 15 years, one thing remains the same: making games is difficult, and in the end everything either works out or it doesn't work out. The gap between success and failure, especially for the so-called triple-A, is vanishingly small.
For example, in one well-received shooter that you may well have played, the weapons didn't work until about two months before release. Weapon. In another shooter, weapons didn't have crosshairs until early development, so team members had to stick a tiny piece of blue patch in the middle of the screen to aim. It was a port of a game that came out a few years ago, I should add.
One delightfully ambitious and completely over-complicated open world racing game that people are desperately waiting for a sequel to (and I will never play again), even for it to launch at all just a few months before the start of the E3 demo - which itself caused myself many, many breakdowns - it was a difficult task. Especially on the PS3, which at the time was like trying to program advanced graphics into a kazoo. When a teammate and I eventually crashed the E3 demo, causing the entire PS3 to explode, the sound of anguished wails would have made Michael Corleone blush.
There are many, many other similar stories. I once got a promotion a few months before the launch of an ambitious turn-based strategy game when I showed up for the night shift (people were working on it 24 hours a day, trying to meet the release date) and my boss said, “You've been promoted. I quit” and just left the office.
The reason: the much-desired naval battles, a key selling point, simply didn't work. Every morning, at the end of the shift, I had to write delivery reports (to the incoming test teams, as well as the development and production teams), telling them as diplomatically as I could that, yes, we regret to inform you that this is still complete fucker.
Guess what? Each of these games came out and, to a greater or lesser degree, looked little like what they looked like just a few weeks before. (Some games, especially annual sports games, can change dramatically even during the review and release stages.) Some of them received glowing reviews, most of them you've played or heard of, and at least one of them caused a real problem on review day. One day in August, an important magazine gave the game an 8. One of the project developers said: “I would give it 10 points.” Someone replied: "That's why people who make games don't review them." Play fight music in the saloon bar.
Luckily, things calmed down before they got out of control. But such an emotional reaction wasn't necessarily unexpected either, and it's another part of a leak from GTA 6 (or any game in general) that could have drastic and invisible consequences: these things aren't done by robots, but by a whole army of people whose motives for to ensure that everything goes well, varied, but whose devotion and sacrifice, as a rule, are not. ..;
It's exhausting to spend years of your life working on these things, especially when it doesn't seem like any progress is being made to the outside world (or even some nerd in the production office).
So when 90 videos or so appear online, I can imagine how devastating it is - especially when people who know nothing about the game fight back against it. (An example of how online opinion can change in just a few seconds: a top-secret trailer for a game I was attached to showed up at the expo without leaks. It had a long intro and people in the chat were literally saying, "What the fuck is this ?’ When it was shown, everything went quiet. It’s such a fine line.)
Luckily, there has been a lot of response on social media, with many game developers - both big and small - showing off what Metacritic's darlings looked like in development. Whether this will be enough for the Rockstar team, I don't know. But in my own opinion, what I saw looked very, very good for the time the game was in development.
And with that in mind, imagine what the game will look like when it releases in 2148.
