A leak in the game industry is when an announcement, ether about a new game, new console or console revision, or price cut, is revealed before its intended date. Sometimes it is a retailer that accidentally leaks details about a future game or system, other times it's a industry insider or something else entirely.
2000s[]
- Although Kid Icarus was rumored since early 2008 by IGN and other sources, there was no tangible evidence. In May 2008, artwork presumably from the game leaked and made its way onto Kombo.com.[1]
- In June 2008, a month before E3 2008, a major security lapse by Intellisponse, a research firm, revealed what appeared to be several new games, including screenshots, trailers, and promotional material for them. Games revealed included a music-game LIPS, Forza 3, new additions to the Spider-Man franchise, an adventure game Crucible, as well as a new Tony Hawk game using a board for the Xbox 360/PS3. Enthusiasts found information about Trioxide, an emulator to play console games on PCs. Wii Yoga and several other Wii games were available too.
- In September 2003, the source code for the PC game Half-Life 2 game leaked onto to the Internet. The game developer's (Valve) servers were compromised by a German hacker.
- An alpha version of Id's Doom III was leaked in January 2003. Carmack blamed ATI's relaxed policy on following NDAs.[2]