Sometimes, leaked corporate documents detail the darkest realities of Silicon Valley. Other times, they tell us that there’s a Yoshi game coming out.
After years of recurring video game-related leaks from YouTube, we have some more information on what’s been going down. According to a report from 404 Media, a Google contractor used admin credentials in 2017 to leak a not-yet-published Nintendo video on YouTube, which showed that the company was developing a new Yoshi game.
These leaks have persisted in the years since the Yoshi incident. In the gaming world, it’s kind of an open secret that a lot of leaks happen due to unlisted, private and scheduled videos on YouTube. Before making big announcements, companies like PlayStation and Nintendo will upload and schedule game trailers, but employees at Google — which owns YouTube — can sometimes access these unreleased, private videos and share them with the public.
Google has investigated some of these incidents, including the leak of the Yoshi game, but Gaming Insider’s Tom Henderson wrote that these investigations are not working. Just last week, the list of games to be announced at PlayStation’s State of Play event was widely leaked ahead of time, and last year, Rockstar Games was forced to release the trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 early, since it had been leaked.
This might just be an issue within YouTube’s back end, but it doesn’t bode well for other corporate data at Google if it’s so easy for a contractor to access this kind of information.
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