 We had to have a serious conversation and this actually deals directly with the field I'm in. You guys know I am somebody who covers a lot of rumors and leaks here over at Nintendo Prime here, right? We've talked about things that leaked for tears of the kingdom, the art book leak and stuff like that. We go over obviously tons of the rumors and legit leaks, non-legit leaks, the Nvidia hack that happened last year that led to us getting a bunch of information. Look, we cover a lot of this stuff here and there are right and wrong ways to cover leak information. One thing is any leaks that happen to contain personal information be it like emails and all that stuff you really shouldn't disseminate. Of course, then there are situations where sometimes the information is contained within those emails. So then what happens then? Well then maybe some of that information is pertinent to still talk about but then you don't want to give people's contact information out or it's a sticky situation covering leaks and I would know because I do it all the time and we all have our different moral standards on leak coverage. But today we're talking about the insomniac games leak and not because I'm here to dive into a bunch of the information but I want to talk about the hypocrisy of the video game journalism field that we're that we're in because there's been a lot of moral grandstanding over the I mean I don't know what else to call it it is moral grandstanding over this insomniac games leak and it's extremely hypocritical and honestly it almost inherently shows that there is a bias in this industry and again this is my opinion that there's a bias just based on the evidence you're going to see towards PlayStation and Sony when it comes to coverage and how they're willing to treat them versus how they're willing to treat everybody else. So just to put us all on the same page there was a ransomware attack that got access to insomniac games from Sony that contained a bunch of information they had a bunch of personal details and emails they also had a whole bunch of new details on different video games and here's the thing all that information is out there I've actually seen most of it because I wanted to know what the roadmap was for all the stuff I wanted to see some Wolverine gameplay etc etc but I chose to consume that now none of this is relevant to Nintendo Prime which is why I haven't talked about this because again this isn't a Nintendo related leak but here's some interesting parts out there first off Greg Miller from kind of funny games the day that this stuff happened on the 19th put out this little tweet and made a statement over on their kind of funny games channel and the tweet's interesting this says this insomniac leak is an invasion of privacy done on a massive scale that's why today we will not be reporting on the details of the leak instead we'll discuss how this affects the people working on your favorite games there's a little bit of irony here because literally today on kind of funny games they made reference to aspects of information that were in the leak oh by the way they also didn't have a single problem covering same day the Capcom ransomware data breach that also contained highly personal information on the actual developers no problem covering that a few years ago now Greg Miller appeared in Spider-Man 2 as a MPC character and yes kind of funny games is clearly in a close relationship with insomniac games so they are more likely to take this stance with this particular developer but it shows an inherent bias that you are unwilling to cover this meanwhile other companies such as a Japanese one you were more than willing to do it simply because you have no relations to said company yeah that's a journalistic problem moving on how about let's go to PlayStation websites right how about the biggest PlayStation news website on the internet we're not talking about the IGNs in the game spots we'll get to those in a moment how about pushsquare.com a place I frequent for all of my news they put out a post on it saying this leak happened they said beware the Marvel Wolverine and PS5 assets are beginning to appear online and they noted it that they will not be reporting and showing and talking about the stuff within this leak due to the criminal nature of the hack slash leak right because it's a ransomware attack it is an illegal data breach however they had no problem doing that exact same thing for who again oh Capcom when they reported all of that which was also a fact-based ransomware attack which is also a criminal attack the same exact way this Sony leak happened but it wasn't a Sony owned studio it was a Japanese studio oh and by the way they actually had a ransomware attack from Microsoft just a few months ago there was a big ransomware attack where a bunch of emails were leaked they had no problem covering that as well including information they thought was pertinent to Sony fans again treating Sony different now maybe you're not shocked a Sony websites treating Sony owned studios different but yeah that's not good who are not done because it goes well beyond that how about Timur Hassan the managing editor at GameSpot he went ahead and threw this little nugget out there onto the Twitterverse saying really feel for the insomniac crew not just because it's putting all of their work out there but also their lives it's awful this isn't a leak it's a malicious breach that endangers people won't be covering the contents of it on GameSpot and he's speaking for all of GameSpot because he gets to control the content that comes out and yet they also put out the ransomware leaks from Capcom which again the Capcom one's huge because it's literally the exact same type of leak in a legal data breach containing personal information they reported on it oh they weren't done they also reported on the massive GTA 6 leak out there which by the way was also a data breach oh and this one's also interesting because this comes from one of the few people in the industry I do really respect and Andy Robinson and I give him credit for one thing except that it doesn't line up unless this is a recent policy change he went out and said it should go without saying but video game chronicle won't be reporting specifically on any of the stolen assets in the insomniac hack this isn't a leak and people's personal information is included in the breach feel for the insomniac today which it is like literally by the definition of the word a leak doesn't matter how the information was obtained it leaked out of the company that being said he did add some more context and I think feel context is important he says for those asking video game chronicle didn't cover the Capcom hack for the same reason and it's true I cannot find any coverage of the Capcom hack on their website there's damaging personal info here and I don't want to amplify it for the sake of outing some future games there's a clear difference between this and other leaks and covering ramification and covering ramifications versus content and he says this is my decision and it's easy for me because we're independent and can forego traffic others can make their own calls on the value of coverage I empathize this isn't an easy call for some and since I posted earlier it's clear there's genuine info worth covering beyond x game exists video game chronicles duty is absolutely to our readers we have clear standards that doesn't mean we don't have empathy for who we cover the games media biz is so intrinsically tied to the ups and downs of the game industry so the screw them argument doesn't really work for me I don't think anyone who reads video game chronicle can accuse us of holding back the secrecy in games journalism and 99% of the time it's in the public domain it has journalistic value we'll publish it so our early leak reporting I wouldn't do now but that's just growth now the interesting part in saying they wouldn't do now Xandy Robinson is to be all end all there is they covered the Xbox ransomware leak and they didn't just cover it they put all of the information all of the important game information out there they did an entire podcast episode on it and again this was just three months ago now I understand by putting all of this information out there and this is just what I have right now I'm sure if I did additional digging I could find other grandstanding happening I find this to be a little disgusting and I want to start by saying that I don't believe in ransomware attacks I don't believe in data breaches but once the information is out there you either need to be willing to cover or unwilling to cover you never detail the personal information in fact there's this whole thing about journalism ethics and moralities and none of that stuff really applies to this situation other than two things one you should show empathy for those that are affected by this and that's very easy to do obviously we feel horrible for the employees at insomniac games but beyond that it doesn't mean don't report on the given information what it means is you don't put the personal stuff out there right that's that's where the ethics comes in play you don't grab people's personal contact information and start posting it on your website you don't grab emails between people talking about very personal things and throw that stuff on the internet right that is where you draw the line but in terms of information that you can glean from the data breach once it's out there you know the all the Wolverine stuff all the future spider-man stuff yada yada yada all of that stuff is actually within the journalism rules to report which is why you're also seeing people like Andy Robinson not chastising IGN who has gone in depth on this and other outlets who have done it as well because those outlets have always done it for this stuff and they're going to continue to do it my issue isn't whether an outlet chooses to cover this or not my issue is that they've done it for xbox they did it for capcom in fact you guys remember the Nvidia leak last year that had the mvn2 and all this information that we were trying to glean for the Nintendo switch to and everyone talked about it every outlet on the planet that was a data breach the line in the sand of the morality is where I have a problem because the line in the sand is clearly appearing for one company and not being applied as a blanket standard for all and I think I know why because insomniac games is located in North America and is a beloved studio if this happened to EA like it happened to Microsoft no one would have a problem reporting all this stuff but it didn't happen to EA this time it didn't happen to Microsoft even though it happened earlier this year it happened to a beloved Sony studio and that is where I'm seeing the bias and have the inherent issues look if you are a place that doesn't cover video game leaks it would make sense not to cover this one if you're a place that will cover certain leaks as long as they're of a rumor nature you know unverifiable but then when it comes to actual data breaches and ransomware attacks you always have consistently refused to cover that stuff beyond just mentioning that it happened okay my issue is all of these places doing this grandstanding every piece of grandstanding you've seen out there so far are from the same outlets that didn't treat other situations with the same respect video game chronicle love Andy Robinson but here's the deal hey you might not have covered the Capcom one but you did throw out information from the Microsoft one this is bad and I'm going to call it out and I'm going to lose a lot of industry friends over this a lot of these people I'm talking about are people I have talked to behind the scenes and I don't wish any ill will on them and this isn't meant to attack them or attack their outlets I'm just tired of the inherent Sony bias and I think that's what bothers me about this the most I'm not saying I'm not going to tell you if you should cover or pay attention to these leaks or not but I will say be consistent I'm consistent and what am I consistent in if there's a leak of Nintendo game information out there even if it came from a ransomware attack like the giga leak that happened years ago if there's actual video game information in there I'm going to cover and I'm going to show of it what I can I'm a bit more limited on YouTube due to their copyright system not as limited on websites but very limited on YouTube because they're the copyright system but I can still talk about all the stuff and describe it and do fan drawings and all that of what's out there I find this to just be a little ironic I'm willing to cover all this stuff there is some idea out there if you actually listen to all of the journalistic laws that exist that you actually almost have a requirement as a journalist to not ignore this information I am just going to say my general stance is either don't cover any of the leaks out there you know I'm just gonna let's make this clear let's make this crystal clear cover leaks or don't cover leaks period what we're seeing happening with Sony right now is horrendous but also when you're still willing to do it for other companies that aren't named Sony aren't owned by Sony it's a problem all these dollars had no problem covering the giga leak the Nvidia leak the uh Microsoft leak oh and they had no problem covering Capcom which was literally the exact same attack video game chronicle credit to them they didn't dive too deep into the Capcom stuff however they did do it for Microsoft which was also the same sort of attack so this time even less game leaks just more personal information I'm sick of this now we've all known we're not dumb we've all known as Nintendo fans when we pay attention around the internet to all of these generalized game outlets that yes absolutely there's a Sony bias in their reporting and we know it but we can always counter it with we have such an incredible Nintendo fan community that we don't have to go to the IGNs the game spots of video game chronicles for our stuff you guys can check out us youtubers right here you can go to nintendolife.com or my nintendo news or go nintendo or nintendo we there's a whole bunch of places that popped up and exist simply because nintendo wasn't being covered properly at most of these outlets but guys be consistent stop the mortal grandstanding just because it's Sony these leaks are horrible ransomware leaks are horrible but they happen and they're going to be more of them in the future data breaches suck I feel for the people whose jobs and lives are impacted especially when personal information gets out there let alone information on games that they wanted the public to see in a different light I've already defended people that were attacking the Wolverine game because this is not the state the game was supposed to be shown in however it is perfectly journalistically fine to share said information as long as you're not dabbling into the personal details and on top of that you shouldn't moral grandstand about it I'm sorry don't moral grandstand for your website as the leader of your sites when your website doesn't hold that moral standard for any other company I'm tired of it do better game industry in fact let's let's separate this out do better game journalism industry I don't think you can thank you guys so much for tuning in and you know what I almost feel better for the IGNs and other places of the world because at least you know what they're going to do they're consistent in their standards they're posting about the leaks they're going to do it every time Kotaku same way and I have a lot of issues with Kotaku but when it comes to leaks they're going to post about it no matter what I'm okay with that be consistent consistency matters reader expectations are met have a good day