Hackers Invade Rockstar, Insomniac – Carlos’s News Speedrun #1

Dec 27, 2023

Happy Wednesday. Just a couple days after X-mas Day!

Hope you got everything you wanted and — more importantly — got a chance to spend quality time with your loved ones.

I’m trying something a little new for We Got Comms (and Twitter/X nation) to hopefully keep the site more regularly updated — newsletter style!

First Up…

1. Hackers have decided that they give no effs considering Rockstar’s privacy and have started leaking all kinds of fun GTA V stuff that might amount to 200GB worth of data.
   • Most painful for me? The purported leaks include references to a cancelled Bully 2 and 8 GTA 5 story DLCs with intriguing titles like “SP Manhunt Pack,” “Relationship Pack,” and “LibertyV DLC.” (Via Kotaku)
   • Rockstar doesn’t take these kind of things lightly, so I’m sure they’re laser-focused on getting some serious repercussions lined up.

Speaking of Rockstar…

• Last year’s GTA VI hacker was sentenced to “a secure hospital for life unless doctors deem him no longer a danger,” according to the BBC.

Adamantium meets its match:

• Wolverine developer, Insomniac Games, was unfortunately another victim in the hack game this past week and issued a statement referencing one of its titular character’s attributes:

“This experience has been extremely distressing for us. […] However, like Logan…Insomniac is resilient.”

My take: It’s an unfortunate turn of events for Insomniac, but it also turned out to be a sort of morality litmus test for gaming journalists to report on it or not. It was icky due to personal data being part of the cyber breach, but otherwise there were some interesting data points to at least give context to the business of gaming (i.e. Sunset Overdrive making the developer ONLY $567 in profit is wild.)

The Small Bytes…

• 🧝🏽‍♂️ “Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children” will get a theatrical run before We Got Comms’ 2020 Game of the Year sequel, Final Final VII Rebirth drops next year. Canon, FTW. (Via Kotaku)
• 🇨🇳 Tencent and Netease have almost 80 billion wiped off their market value due to new Chinese regulations that state games can “no longer offer daily rewards for logging in.” (Via Stephen Totilo)
• 🤑 @LegacyKillaHD laments “pro-greed consumers” that champion $100 games because they used to be “$60 back in 2004.” I agree. It is kind of odd to see gamers keep telling companies: “Take more of my money!” We give them enough considering micro-transactions, season passes, etc…
• 💾 There’s apparently a “flash cart” coming soon to Switch that “supports all firmwares.” Jeff Grubb pranks the internet suggesting a Switch 2 announcement is imminent…

Watchu Been Playin’ Preview…

🕷️ Just game tape solved Spider-Man 2 and can’t wait to discuss with the “Salient Points” crew about how mind-blowing the experience was. So weird that it didn’t receive top honors at various game awards — (cough) TGAs (cough). My spider-sense says it’ll do very well when we hash out We Got Comms’ coveted Game Awards in a couple weeks…