This is an interesting read, it provides a possible explanation for the recent (and quite abundant) amount of video game leaks. Thoughts?

http://biz.yahoo.com/fool/041018/1098125700_1.html

Yeah, its kinda sad for the companies that make games. I went to www._________.org

A while ago to see if there was any music worth anything on there. I saw about 11 torrents with 22000+ downloading on each a copy of doom 3.

This month the same goes for halo even though it's french.

It seems that some employee or jounalist keeps giving ou this stuff to either Vengence, BT GM, and MONEY or whatever other groups they are because that person is pissed at some minor thing at the company or the producer.

But now that article says that leaked stuff can be done on purpose.......................

That actually isnt that bad an idea but those that spread the leak usually test the game to see if it's full so it's my opinion that intensionally leaking games might not work for companies.

The preview idea is good because many people like me download the game anyway to see if it's any good then if it is good, go out and buy it from the local store. If it's bad, just chuck it in the garbage bin and save ourselves the effort of wasting 30-54 bucks.

It would be great though if the people in halo 2 did really drop rifles at the first sight of enemies and ran away........

I wouldn't surprised if this were true. Microsoft is a smart company, they know there audience. This leak has sparked people to buy the game, i'm sure of if. Nerds know how nerds think.

A mildly confusing article, but provides some more inoformation on the topic nonetheless-

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/559/559322p1.html

Basically, it's all just for publicity.

With the next month officially being the BIGGEST month in video game history, it wouldn't be completely surprising if game companies did something like this to set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd. However, I don't exactly see this as being something a giant like Microsoft or Sony would do, so color me skeptical. Besides, the games that have leaked (Halo 2, Doom 3, GTA:SA) are all being marketed very well anyway, so why intentionally leak copies on the internet? They're all going to sell, so why would a company leak it? That doesn't make sense.

Has anyone else seen the new ad for GTA:SA with the Guns'n'Roses song? That ad makes me want to play that game. Y'all know my allegiance to a particular franchise, so come to your own conclusions.

Well, the "Bard's Tale" Game was also recently leaked. (suprise, suprise!) That game doesn't have too much hype, it seems everyone is catching on to these new marketing "tactics".

If MS did leak the game and actually went down on downloaders then all I have to say is:
Sick.

all those "scene" groups are the cause of this, retards like "deviance" and "razor" have been making up poor excuses to "release" games over the internet, i see their dodgy rips everywhere and its because of them we've lost so many great companies (bankruptcy), westwood, interplay, black isle...all of them...even SNK was about to fall under due to piracy, so what did they do, change to a new arcade machine (atomiswave)...but it wont stop these idiots from sending the files around the internet, they just dont understand what damage their really doing i guess.

hmm, the link doesn't work, it says "Page has expired".

heheh, why do I find that that happens alot lately.

Publicity must be what its all about or maybe somebodys getting bribed

Keaking of video game's isa kinda of a spoiler I'd prefer to be suprised by the game then be told what's gonna be in it.

yeah sometimes its nice to know about some of its contents but when you know the whole storyline...its sucks

Have you been paying attention to any of this? The companies making these games have been the ones "leaking" them in unplayable format. Why do you think no one's ever been caught? With today's technology, it wouldn't be hard to catch someone. It's all for the publicity.

Oh, and Westwood didn't go bankrupt - it was shut down by EA and incorporated into a new section called EA Los Angeles. [EALA]

westwood got shutdown? I dint know that. I played Command and conquer so much when I was a kid, man that sucks

sorry, i wasnt clear enough with that post, the scene groups know people whom are in the company, thus how they obtain the game so early.

ohhk, i always thought westwood went bankrupt =\

thats the only way it could be leaked out, they people in the company do it for who knows why. Im guessin g for some bribe or someting but who knows?

They leek it to get the Hype up so hopefully(wink wink) sales will soar, and their pockets will be getting fatter by the minute. Just like what car companies have been doing for years. They leek a little bit, just enough to wet your pallet, and then when it hits the market, instant success, no matter how big of a peice of garbage it is. It's the companies way to try and reach more people. Not everyone reads the magazines for that one perticular system, but almost everyone in the US(and a good chunk of the World) has the Internet. It's a way to reach more and more people. No one was bribed for doing this kind of thing, infact, they probably got raises, a new car, and some more stock options. I mean come on, is it that big of a mystery of why/how these get "leaked" so much? I mean MGS3 had just come out and "somehow" word was out that MGS4 was already in the works for PS3. Already, gamers world-wide are counting the days till the release of MGS4.

Also, it's kindof like an arms race(stated this in the "Which system would you buy" board). It's a way to show the competition what new crap one system is coming out with, and then the other starts developing a game that would try and put the other to shame. It's all tactics, tactics about making money, and trying to shut the other down.

If a company leaks their product and people downloading it, surely they have no legal recourse against those who downloaded it as they did it with the intention of getting people to download it.

I read a lot about the Half Life 2 leak apparently containing a small program which would send the downloaders' information to Valve once it was run, but if that was the case then Valve would have been the ones to have put the tracker there and therefore intentionally leaked the game, possibly, and so wouldn't be able to do anything about it.


Shame about Westwood as well. EA seems to take over so many gaming developer studios and then they just discard their websites and in cases, online functionality of their games (Populous and Red Alert 2 for example).

The Bullfrog website still exists, advertising their latest Theme Park game but it's nothing but dead and old links. Same with the Westwood site.