For some people, discovering a leak on the internet is like getting a surprise gift that they are eager to tear open to see what’s inside. With the internet as wide reaching and instantaneous as it is, it’s very easy for a slip up of information one night to become the top headline of hundreds of news articles the next morning.

While some people may be really excited to learn about a new Super Mario game in development years before an official announcement was scheduled to be made to the public, it greatly damages the game industry and the appeal of games to fans.

The Alluring Power of Leaks

Leaks can be exciting simply because we’re learning new information that no one was supposed to find out about. Whether it’s the newest tile of the annual Assassin's Creed series or full concept art and screenshots of a new IP like Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, fans of the gaming world are ready to jump on it! It’s the juicy, forbidden fruit that we didn’t know existed and now are chowing away, savoring every delicious bite of hidden knowledge stored away.

However, one of the biggest problems that leaks have is that they are often times pieces of the the full picture often leaving the majority of the news up to the imagination of people receiving the news. A screenshot or a title thrown into the internet gets people pumped at the very possibility of something new in the works just around the corner. Yet, no one asks how accurate these "leaks" really are. A lot of the time, the internet boasts rumors and even fake news and it's this kind of information that tends to break through ether of internet and gets to the people's news feed first before anything else.

Leaks are a catalyst for hype and hype is quickly contagious. It causes people to create theories of what these leaks mean and prompts them to have these unrealistic expectations of a game that may or may not even be in development. If the news is fake, fans are disappointed at the missed opportunity or, if it's true, developers have to meet up to the crazy expectations of fans often still leaving them disappointed despite the game companies best efforts to make the game an absolute hit.

The Frustration of Game Developers

For anyone who has access to the internet, leaks can be nice and exciting surprise of hype that will make their day. However, for a lot of people, it can actually be the opposite, especially for the developers of said leaked games. While we may be celebrating over this new information getting out, game developers are pounding their heads against the wall trying to figure out how they can salvage from their game becoming leaked out into the world.

Developers work on these games for years, pouring their sweat, blood, and tears into making a new and memorable gaming experience for others. They have a unique marketing strategy to reveal this new adventure to the world and right around the time they plan on making an official announcement...a leak is found and their grand announcement is made for them by reddit users on the Internet.

This strikes a blow, not only at their advertising campaign, but also towards all the work developers have poured into the project making it the best it can be and keeping it a surprise for the major reveal. With games coming and going so rapidly, game studios heavily rely on their announcement reveal of their game, so it can make an impact in the community and keep it relevant enough so games that are already out won’t overshadow it’s spotlight.

The element of surprise is essential to building up a solid fan base and studios capitalize on that fact. However, once their content has been realized to the world they lose all the pull they previous had and now have to play catch up with the internet as it’s spreads the news of their game without them.

Premature Judgment of Games

Leaks also have a detrimental effect of prompting players to form an opinion about a game before it has had a chance to shine with the studio’s full reveal of the project. Whether the leak is something early in the process of building the game or something in the later stages, people will be quick to judge.

Players will see a short video or screenshot of a future project and complain that the graphics look terrible or the programming is rough and unrefined or that the game simply looks like trash and isn’t fun. It’s crazy how people will make premature judgments on a game that had no plans on revealing its existence to the world in the first place. It’s like saying a building is ugly or is structured horribly when only the foundation has been laid down.

People like to make face judgments about things, especially when it comes down to entertainment. While these opinions are premature, they carry a lot of weight in the online community. If someone bashes a game based off of a screenshot that is early in development, that “review” of the game will travel around and make people hesitant about potentially buying a game because of this person's negative comments surrounding the project. This is an unfair judgment cast on a game and prevents the game from having the chance to give itself a proper pitch to fans.

Take Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, for example. This game’s cover art was leaked on the internet just a few weeks before it’s official reveal at 2017’s E3 conference. Initially, it received a lot of negative feedback because people couldn’t understand what they were seeing. Mario was shooting a gun. A Rabbid peach was taking a selfie. In many people’s eyes, everything they were seeing was blatantly wrong, blasphemous even.

Most people see the Mario franchise as a playful platformer series and the Rabbids as these mischievous and hilarious rabbit creatures running around causing trouble. No one would have ever thought to make the connection that these two IP’s could come together, with them shooting guns no less. Rabbids shooting a gun, sure. But, have Mario shooting a blaster? That just doesn’t add up.

Since the game didn't get a proper reveal, people starting hated on Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle without even giving it a chance.

The community was in an uproar for a few days because to them, based on the little information they received, this game was destined to fail...miserably. People bashed the hell out of this game without giving it a fair chance. It wasn’t until Ubisoft and Nintendo announced the title at E3 and walked through some of the gameplay that people, who wanted nothing more than for this game to burn, started to turn their opinions around and become more open to the game’s potential.

It’s kinda funny because while many people wanted this game to die at the time of the leak, it actually turned out to be one of the best games you can play on the switch. But this is just one of many examples of how leaks can undervalue a game.

Leaks can Underrate Awesome Gaming News

On top of causing us to have premature opinions about unfinished products, leaks also, unfortunately, desensitize us from what should be awesome and unexpected news. One of the coolest things about learning about a new game that’s in development is seeing the trailer or official announcement for the title.

The developers put a lot of work into creating trailers and fun ways to introduce new games and content into the gaming community. They craft these announcements in special ways, so it comes off as groundbreaking and completely out of the blue even though it’s been in development for years. Seeing a trailer for a new game, like Watch Dogs Legion, or the newest Apex Legends update gets fans excited because it’s so unexpected and it’s intentionally crafted so it’s portrayed as this huge, epic reveal.

Leaks, however, are much less dramatic. In fact, they’re pretty anticlimactic. It dampers what should be exciting news, leading to a slight shadow of disappointment casting over fans. When you see on Facebook that an unannounced Pokemon game has been leaked or when you're surfing the internet and stumble upon a new holiday themed Apex Legends update that has slipped through the cracks, it can soften the impact this news was intended to have on fans.

I don’t know about you, but when I see a leak about something on Apex Legends my heart sinks a little because the developers have worked hard to try to keep it under wraps and now it’s just out there in the world like it’s common news. This undercuts the impact this news should have on the game community. Leaks turn an “Oh my God!” reaction to a “Oh...I guess this is a thing now” reaction.

While leaks may be exciting to hear about at first, they can be a lose-lose situation for both the players and the developers. It greatly devalues the news of upcoming game content in the community and makes it ever harder to fans and exceed expectations. What do you think about leaks? Comment below and I’ll see you next time!

Dean Willms

~Gamer. Designer. Friend.