The leaks of the Last of Us 2: how did it end?

It's almost unbelievable what happened with The Last of Us Part 2 last week: tons of videos containing huge spoilers of the game were uploaded to a YouTube channel.

A serious damage for the Naughty Dog team and for users who are waiting with hype for the sequel to one of the most popular games of the previous generation. As if the postponement of the game due to Covid-19 had not already caused a general situation of discontent.

Because yes, the damage is not enough, then comes the insult: once the spoilers spread many users have enjoyed making memes and montages (spoiler example, look at your own risk), then disseminating them on various social networks. It is therefore almost impossible not to have spoiled something. Unless you have withdrawn from the internet to meditate in some Buddhist temple pending June 19th.

Who spread the leaks of The Last of Us 2? Between theories and conspiracies

At this point a question arises: who spread the leaks? There have been many theories of users and journalists. However, it is necessary to start from the beginning of this story. For the uninitiated, the video leaks weren't the first: at the beginning of April the game's plot was written in its entirety on a 4chan board. The author of the leak claimed to be a relative of a game developer.

This event went almost completely unnoticed since there was no reliability of that information, anyone could have written those lines by inventing a credible plot. In fact, such episodes often occur on the image board, later revealing themselves to be fake. However in that circumstance it was suspicious the almost immediate cancellation of the discussion. Curious spoiler lovers can read a backup of it here. Obviously we advise against it.

The curious thing is that the video leaks published a few days ago do not disprove the content of that post on 4chan. Are the two events therefore related? Among the most widespread theories was that the leaks had been released later to controversies born during crunch periods to which a good part of the team has been subjected. Recently there has also been talk of protests for the postponement of the game that would have consequently led to the postponement of the cash bonus which is generally granted to employees a few months after the release of the title based on sales of the same.

An interesting detail that would give credence to an internal leak of content is the fact that the videos have lines of code at the top of the screen.

It is necessary to remember that these are theories and rumors that although they may seem credible, they do not necessarily represent the actual reality of the facts. However, in the age of social media, everything is taken for granted and anyone feels entitled to say something about it. In addition to the aforementioned memes "to play down", there were also hatespeak attitudes towards the company and the creative director of the game Neil Druckmann in the context of two themes: the aforementioned discontent of the software house employees e the "political" direction which took the narrative of the game.

In this media storm Naughty Dog has revealed the final release date of the game, scheduled for June 19, and has published a message expressing the sorrow of the entire studio for the spoiler leaks. No comments on all the rumors regarding the leaks instead.

Those responsible for the leaks of The Last of Us 2 are hackers

Yesterday he spoke on the matter the former Kotaku reporter Jason Schreier via some tweets. Jason would have talked to some Naughty Dog employees and "two people with direct acquaintances" ascertaining that the leaks are due to hackers who would have found a vulnerability in a patch of their old game and they would use it to access internal servers.

Furthermore Sony has communicated to the editorial staff of Kotaku that the company would have identified the culprits of the leaks and that they are not employees or people who have had anything to do with Naughty Dog. The scenario of "revenge" theorized by some users is therefore denied.

In this regard, more specific information comes from the PixelButts twitter account:

First of all, it would not be a single attack but a series of hacking repeated over the months. The first it would be advent in January when the hacker group discovered a method to access the Amazon servers of some Naughty Dog games.

Although the servers were those dedicated to the multiplayer mode of Uncharted 3 and the first The Last of Us, they were also a lot of content related to the development of the two games. In particular in the server dedicated to The Last of Us there was a lot of material on The Last of Us 2.

It has been stolen since March at least one terabyte of content and what you can see in the spoiler videos is from a build dating back to April XNUMXst. PixelButts doesn't know if that material was actually playable or if it was just simple recordings made by the developers.
At this point we would like to add our consideration: doing 2 + 2 you can also find a connection with the text leak published on 4Chan. Its publication corresponds in fact with the date of the build of the videos, that is, early April.

In any case, the user states that he has notified Naughty Dog of the security flaws as early as February, obviously explaining that he did not participate in the hacking in any way. Finally the flaw it would only be closed on April 30th.

In short, we will never be certain about what happened. The information released in the PixelButts tweets seems valid but we still have to take it with a grain of salt. We have more certainties on the communication issued by Sony to Kotaku.

We close our investigation with a happy news: despite the leaks, despite the spoilers and the hatespeak, The Last of Us 2 is among the most pre-ordered titles ever.

And what do you think of this story? Tell us in the comments on our social networks, obviously maintaining a correct attitude and limiting yourself to the spoiler if you have read or seen the leaks.