Those ‘Last Of Us Part 2’ Leaks Were Not From An Angry Naughty Dog Employee, Hackers Likely

This post was updated on 5/4/20.

All week long, huge leaks about The Last of Us Part 2 have been circulated ahead of the game’s release in late June, though it appears a key part of that story has turned out to be false.

Almost as soon as the leaked footage and development materials began circulating, a rumbling started that this was a “disgruntled Naughty Dog employee” that had leaked the footage. This story evolved from rumors that it was about the long-reported issues of crunch at the studio, and eventually I heard it was about a pay dispute.

Now, the studio is saying outright that this portion of the story is not true.

While it’s not exactly clear how this portion of the rumor snowballed, it’s now been confirmed to Gameindustry.biz “that [Sony] You have identified the primary individuals responsible for the leaks earlier this week, saying they were not affiliated with Sony Interactive Entertainment or Naughty Dog, as was rumored. ”

They are not saying anything past that, but it does dismantle the core premise of the leak, though all the damage the leak did remains in place. I had major plot points spoiled for me within the first 24 hours, even without looking for them, as did countless others. Gamers tuning in to an event like the livestream reveal for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla were greeted with spam chat messages of Last of Us 2 spoilers, and they’ve been spreading widely across Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, reddit, everywhere.

This rumor may have begun because the footage seems to be tagged with all “dev build” stuff, and the hasty conclusion was that a dev had leaked it.

But the official rule-out of Sony or Naughty Dog raises some additional questions.

Could someone “not affiliated” with Sony or Naughty Dog be a third-party contractor who was upset for the previous reasons stated (crunch, pay, etc). Or if it wasn’t that, was this a hack? That kind of thing has happened before, though rarely on this scale, so that would be a significant issue if so.

For now, we just don’t know, and may never know unless Sony comments further on the issue when the investigation concludes. I do have to imagine that someone is going to end up sued for this when all is said and done, after all.

Update: Apparently this does also include contractors in “affiliated”

We’ll see what impact this leak has on Last of Us Part 2 sales, but my guess is… not much. Yes, I have heard people say the spoilers they heard made them not want to play the game, knowing certain plot points they didn’t appreciate, and yet I am sure most of that is talk. Even though I’m not enamored with what I heard or the fact that I heard it, I will be there on day one playing all the same.

More to come as this investigation continues.

Update 2:

Despite some questioning the official narrative that it was not an employee or contractor responsible for the leak, an investigation by Kotaku has concluded that hackers are likely the ones responsible for The Last of Us Part 2 leak.

The report, which includes sources from inside Naughty Dog, says that a security exploit was found in older Naughty Dog games, and that was used to gain access to the developer’s internal servers.

Apparently, back in January, a hacker group discovered they could access Amazon servers that Naughty Dog was using for games like Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us.

“The UC3 key got them UC3 development material, and UC2’s key did the same, but there was some TLOU1 content mixed into UC3’s server,” a source known as Pixelbutts told Kotaku. “It wasn’t too much of a stretch to think TLOU1’s server would have TLOU2 material.”

This is reportedly what led to The Last of Us 2 being compromised and footage and info from a build dated April 1st of the game to be leaked. Sony, however, has not commented on the new report either way, though ruling out both employees and contractors, a hack was the likely answer, which is what the reporting is saying now. What is not clear is who the hackers were, and what, if any, their motivations were for the hack.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Pick up my new sci-fi novel Herokiller, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.