Insomniac Breaks Silence on 'Distressing' Data Breach, Marvel's Wolverine PS5 to Continue as Planned

This has been a devastating leak. My sympathies go to all employees at Insomniac. Not only do they have to worry about the moral impact of a decade of plans being leaked, but they also have to worry about sensitive personal information being leaked...

I personally find it very odd that you can play the leaked build of Wolverine on pc right now, but the finished version will be available years after the PS5 launch.

I really hope Sony will boycott every media outlet that published any content of the leak. Just imagine Eurogamer and Kotaku (and others) not getting any games, demo, invitation, previews, updates and communication from Sony anymore. The gaming world would be so much better for it.

If the quality of the latest Sony PC ports is anything to go by, this stolen build is probably indicative of the end result anyway.

Feel terrible for Insomniac. They're one of the AAA devs that truly care about the players and seeing so much internal information leaked is such a shame.

Regarding the attack and info leak... as Zeke put it in Infamous: "this sucks donkey balls" - it's very regrettable and can potentially affect a lot of the employees involved.... simply because other people could use this info for profiteering.
Speaking of which, the people downloading, using and distributing the leaked content, are just as bad as the attackers, and they should be punished accordingly.

I'm glad however that Sony or Insomniac didn't give into the demands - as that would open up a precedence that would highly encourage future attacks.

@Olmaz So you want Sony to boycott about 95% of all gaming outlets including many non gaming ones that covered it? Okay I guess but that would be Sony giving itself the middle finger

@Triumph741 Most games are developed primarily on PC. There’s a difference between an an unoptimised build that only been run on the developers own hardware and a finished game that will run well on any modern computer.

Sucks, but it doesn’t change my opinion of insomniac or the games they develop. Now bring back Resistance!!!

Stay strong Insomniacs 💪

@Triumph741 According to comments I've read from people who have supposedly played it, I don't think it's actually the full game just about 3 hours worth of vertical slices that are still in a rough state and nowhere near complete but the only good news is that they say the gameplay and combat feels pretty good already.

Hope Insomniac can pour their collective hearts into their upcoming projects and deliver something truly special. Don’t let these selfish idiots have the last laugh.

Miss the good old days when hackers weren’t able to get into game code or being able to look at game files etc.
As they then spoilt it for everyone else including the company.
Hope you guys are able to do continue on with the development and hopefully not allow hackers to get ahold of any more footage etc.

This is terrible for Insomniac (especially the employee data being stolen). I will continue to support them 100% and will not view anything from Wolverine until they are ready to show it off.

@Olmaz
That's kind of a tough one. Should journalists pretend that the information is not out there and widespread already? I don't think it's such an easy answer.

Such a massive bummer, can't think of a game company more undeserving of this.

This really sucks. Even though there's no "good" time for something like this to happen it's especially rough to happen right now. The devs should just be enjoying the holidays with their families not having to stress about their personal info leaking online. Stay strong Insomniac ❤

I said it before and I will say it again insomniac is PlayStation mvp’s right now they gonna put out 5 games by the end of the gen.

@Tecinthebrain Yes, that's exactly what I'd want.

"Gaming journalism" today is already 95% corporate marketing done by ideological shills. Such an action would cleanse the industry in a drastic manner that could only be beneficial.

Believe me, Sony really doesn't need these 95% of media outlet to reach most of their customers, and most gamers out there would rejoice in seeing these outlets be forced to change or die.

@RicebinBernacky No they shouldn't pretend the info is not out there. They should report on the leak, explain they won't publish any of the info in it unless it is officially confirmed and that's it.

That's what PushSquare has done (as far as I know, and for now, hopefully they'll stick with it), and I don't think it has hurt them (but I'd be glad to have an official confirmation about this).

Principles should be held above greed, don't you think?

@Olmaz There needs to be an incentive for news sites to not report such situations. For-profit, it would be beneficial for sites to go into detail, otherwise, viewership will go towards the other sites mentioned in the comments. The quickest way to gain more traction is by emphasizing how forbidden the information is.

I concur though, if it were possible for the information to be written under the umbrella of NDA so sites couldn't discuss the details other than mentioning it happened, I'd be for it. Neither Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony deserve their plans and private information to be revealed... did I say reveal? Stolen. Since that's what happened. But since the morality of the internet has collectively tanked, the thought of Sony forcing news sites to take down or revise articles will garner more hate towards to company. Can't win either way.

@Olmaz to be honest, until push square did an article about it I would have been none the wiser, and that's probably how it should have played out - give the hackers no exposure at all. If insomniac want to post about it, let them.
Now, thanks to the comments section on this site, we know the upcoming 4-5 games from them

@AdamNovice Whole part of being a journalist is sharing and reporting news no matter how the news is gained. End of the day why should they not report this stuff? To spare Sony and Insomniac's feelings? Yeah sorry you're a terrible journalist if you play along and act all buddy with the people you're meant to report on. This sucks for Insomniac but its not on IGN or Eurogamer to cover their asses and refuse to cover news just because said news is a result of a hack.

An unbelievably devastating leak. Hackers and users of that hack should be bought down swiftly and badly. Banning from ISP, any associated PS accounts banned also. Really make this hack representative of how future backs will be handled.

@DennisReynolds Yeah I'll disagree on this. We're not talking about secret defense here, it's just video game. Unless there is some info relative to the game industry that could show abuse of corporations, or HR issues and so on, there's nothing to gain except clicks here for the gaming outlets.

Most gaming "journalists" are not journalists : they are either shills paid by (or at least financially dependent on) publishers, or just ideologically morons that view themselves too seriously.
Investigative gaming journalism done for the benefit of all included in the industry is almost dead today, and publishing the info that leaked does not help.

Now, if an outlet found out by themselves (via hacking or confidential sources) sensitive info about a publisher/developer and then published it, then I would say "ok, that's journalism". Copy-pasting reddit posts of a leak they had nothing to do with... that's just for clicks.

@Olmaz Exactly its just video games so it doesn't matter if IGN reports we may be getting an X-Men game. Fact is the likes of IGN, Kotaku and so on claim to be journalists and its a job of one to report if Venom and X-Mem games are coming exclusive to PS. You can think they're shills even though you have zero evidence to support that claim but fact is they're journalists so a leak like this is something you report on.

I will say though i love how all the white knights are shaming those reporting on the leaks when they were all over the recent MS leaks or the GTA 6 leaks like vultures. Just because Insomniac are "good guys" doesn't mean they should get special privileges. Yes this sucks for Insomniac but to be blunt their troubles ain't the games media problem, it isn't as i said IGN's job to cover for them but it is there job to report what they learned from the leaks. Disagree all you want but you would be a terrible journalist if you were one and no one would hire you, yeah shocker journalism isn't sunshine and rainbows and will require you to do things that feel uneasy.

@DennisReynolds To add on to that. I believe news outlets, including PushSquare, reported on the Capcom Leak with a timetable of games releases, and that hack also contained employee information. Funny how there was no qualms with that despite being just as morally questionable. I am not sure what makes Insomniac so special.

That said, I hope the devs are supported here. They didn't deserve this.

@MS7000 To be clear story spoilers and employer info should be a no go but future games and financial info is stuff that should be reported if you claim to be a journalist. Everyone circled the GTA 6 leaks and no one cared that it came from leaks so why change now? Because we like Insomniac? Sounds like special favours based on bias if you ask me.

Rarely comment here these days but just want to stand in solidarity with Insomniac. Their games are genuinely the best in the industry, I can trace their gaming history to my own childhood and growing up with Spyro on the PS1.
If you're a true fan of gaming, don't play the wolverine build, don't read news on the leaks and buy Spider-Man 2! (Or buy it for someone else if you already have it yourself!)

Isn't this like the third or fourth Sony, or Sony adjacent, breach? When are they going to start taking cyber security seriously?

@Olmaz

Hear hear!

I don't mean to start a whole debate, but who benefits from stealing this much data from SONY? Microsoft. Who would be able to plant an inside man or fund groups of hackers? Limitless pockets M$. Did they do it?

PS: Don't bother replying to me, I won't respond. No matter the circumstances, the direct competitor stands to gain and has shown they will also do anything legally possible to extract information from SONY that they do not want to divulge.

And apologies to the moderators of this crosses boundaries, I feel the criminal act has been of such an unbelievable magnitude that I have a hard time wrapping my head around it especially with this trickle down information trend.

It completely undo years of media strategization and takes agency away from SONY and hands it to a legion of douchebags.

@EfYI Dude WTF is this comment? You need to get out of your mom’s basement.

Stay strong insomniac.you are PlayStation mvp.word up son

@EfYI dude lol. Chill I know I hardly hop on here, but come on man. A 2 Trillion dollar company is not going to chance legal issues over a flippin’ video game lol. This isn’t some west side story gang rivalry. Please calm down, and step away from the keyboard.

I ventured onto twitter for the first proper time in my life over the last couple of days. And seriously, the fanboys are out of control and it makes PushSquare look extremely tame in comparison; seriously gives another perspective.

Anyway the leaks are horrible but (excluding the personal data) the inconsistency in reporting is a joke. No one held back from Capcom, Microsoft, Rockstar etc. really disappointed in the bias for Insomniac. I agree it shouldn’t be covered but the others should also not have been covered.

Not sure why the employees at those other companies are any less human, or have any fewer feelings, than the people at Insomniac. Kinda Funny especially has shown what they are really about.

Hackers need to be waterboarded. The damage they cause (I am talking the employee info they stole) has long lasting effects.