The tale of ‘The Real Insider’ shows how facile and idiotic gamer leaker culture is
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It’s an understatement to say that this past weekend has been a pretty big one for video game leaks. That sentiment is primarily driven by the huge story of a hacker breaking into Rockstar games’ systems and illegally revealing vast swathes of the next Grand Theft Auto game – but as that happened another story quietly unfolded, one of the undoing of a recent rising star of the leaker community. It’s also a story that, I’d argue, exposes how silly this whole leaking affair is.
If you don’t follow Games Twitter with a laser focus (and who can blame you), here’s what happened. A new Twitter account popped up called ‘TheRealInsider’, and it began revealing things about upcoming gaming announcements and marketing beats. People quickly started paying attention because it got stuff right. Its initial big break was revealing information about Ubisoft’s huge slate of upcoming Assassin’s Creed games – and then more and more information about other games followed. It grew a huge following in a very short time.
As part of that Assassin’s Creed reveal, TheRealInsider made a rookie error. When one high-profile member of the media not clued in about the upcoming Assassin’s projects said he wasn’t sure their claims were true, they got smug. There was some mocking, some boasting. When the announcement came, some ‘I told you so’.