Rockstar confirmed the leak late Monday, saying a third party had illegally downloaded confidential information, including early development plans for the next Grand Theft Auto. “At this time,” Rockstar said, “we do not anticipate any disruption to our live game services or any long-term impact on the development of our ongoing projects.” The leaked footage shows animation tests, level layouts and a heist mission, featuring a female protagonist (a first for the series) and her accomplices. It also shows a modern day Vice City, Rockstar’s version of Miami. Debugging commands and technical information are prominently overlaid on everything – the voice acting is spot on, but the game is far from finished. This leak will have disrupted years of marketing planning: Grand Theft Auto VI has been in development in some form since 2014. It also represents a financial loss for the publisher, as investigations are launched and plans are disrupted. Beyond that though, a leak like this will affect how a game is perceived. Unfinished video games almost universally look and play like garbage because game development is a delicate choreography between about 200 different dancers that only come together at the end. If you got a glimpse of, say, Red Dead Redemption 2 or Assassin’s Creed even six months before they were finished, and weren’t aware of the final sprint that has all the right graphics and sound effects and bug fixes, you’d probably think it was rubbish . Some of the uninformed opinions about the GTA hack on social media are so blindingly stupid they think they’re begging, from “Now someone has stolen the source code maybe they can do a better job with the game than Rockstar” to “The these lazy developers deserve a leak like this.” This is extremely discouraging for video game creators. It’s like hacking into a novelist’s laptop and stealing a first draft, then posting excerpts of it online. I’m not one to bemoan a loss of corporate profits, but I can’t help but feel for the people making this video game – which, if it’s anything like what Rockstar has done in the past, will be one of the most complex and ambitious yet game development projects ever undertaken. This comes at an odd time for Rockstar, too: since Grand Theft Auto V launched in 2013 and broke every sales record, co-founder Dan Houser has moved on. (His brother, Sam, remains the company’s president.) In 2016, another founding member, Leslie Benzies, sued the company for tens of millions in denied rights, claiming he was forced out. During the development of the highly detailed Red Dead Redemption 2, there were allegations of working conditions at its studios, particularly at Rockstar Lincoln, which handled quality assurance, known as one of the most cut-throat areas of game development. The developer who made GTA V is no more, and there is so much waiting for GTA VI. It’s hard to imagine that this leak won’t hit employee confidence. Will Rockstar reveal their timeline now? While it can’t accelerate its growth, it can speed up its marketing engine – so it’ll be easier to get excited about it.
What to play
Back to monkey island. Photo: Devolver Digital via Tinsley PR It’s finally here! Return to Monkey Island takes us back to the golden days of Lucasarts point-and-click comedy games. I’ll fire it up as soon as I finish writing this newsletter, having read Oliver Holmes’ review: “The result of the reunion of the old team is a tale that retraces old paths, but also clearly wants to be more than an ode to a bygone era of video games. Never [adorably shambolic pirate Guybrush] Threepwood going to an oracle, the Voodoo Lady, for advice sums up the paradox facing this game: “You have to walk the path, but you’ve already walked the path.” Return to Monkey Island does this by looking backwards and forwards at the same time, reminding us that the point-and-click adventure will never really die: it’s a zombie pirate that won’t be on the ground for long.” Available on: PC, Nintendo Switch Average playtime: 7-11 hours
What to read
Along with a trailer and release date for the next Zelda, last week’s Nintendo Direct presentation had a few surprises. These include Pikmin 4, a game that was in development for so long I was convinced it no longer existed. If you’ve never played this strange and rather heartbreaking game about tiny alien people trying to survive in the horribly dangerous gardens of our planet, you’ll get your chance next year.
GoldenEye 007 is back! Ask! Except that online multiplayer is only available on Nintendo Switch, and a 4K graphics upgrade will only apply to the Xbox version. I haven’t seen this kind of feature split in years, and it must be the product of some turbulent licensing discussions. Bonus fact: GoldenEye 007 was remade years ago for the Xbox 360, but never released.
Arena fighting game League of Legends has tapped out-and-out gay pop star Lil Nas X as its new president as a marketing ploy, and I have to begrudgingly admit that this celebrity content collaboration is actually pretty funny.
The Sims 4 will be free-to-play from October, which will no doubt attract even more helpless teenagers and students to the fiendishly compulsive combination of life management and home design. Sims 2 was responsible for almost failing my end of school exams so good luck to them. Last Friday’s Wordle managed to piss everyone off with its solution: parer – a word that even my phone doesn’t autocorrect, with its pathological need to turn every sentence I type on my phone into a word salad, it recognizes as real . If you were furious, know that you’re not alone: the New York Times reported that only 41% of players actually solved it, compared to the usual 99%.
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Great news for fans of open-world action games set in Japan: in addition to a new Assassin’s Creed, there are also three new Yakuza games coming from Sega: Yakuza 8, the next in the great series of Tokyo gangster sagas. a smaller scale spinoff game. and Like a Dragon: Ishin, a remake of a PS3 game that takes the Yakuza back to 1860 Kyoto. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found the 1,000 hours required to complete all the existing Yakuza games – the last one I finished was Yakuza 2 , in 2006. Another interesting detail: after nearly two decades, Sega is abandoning the Yakuza name in the west, and the series will now be known as Like a Dragon, which is closer to the Japanese title.
What to click
Grand Theft Auto 6 leak: who hacked Rockstar and what did they steal? Nintendo DS was more than just a console – it’s part of my family history – Dominik Diamond Splatoon 3 Review – Nintendo’s new squid game is inky fun Back to the Monkey Island review – this comeback game isn’t just a greatest hits rehash
Block of questions
There is no question block this week because this week’s issue is already huge, but send me your questions, especially the silly ones. You can do so by clicking reply to this newsletter. Until next week!
