Doom 3, Halo 2 and now GTA: San Andreas have all been leaked prior to their release date. Does anyone know how this happens? Do people from the outside bribe insiders? Disgruntled employees doing it for revenge? People trying to get massive kudos in the filesharing/warez community? Obviously HL2 had their servers hacked, but that isn't always the case. What initiatives can/should be taken by games studios to prevent this kind of thing from happening? The damage done to the industry by piracy is bad enough, without stuff leaking like this... though I'm not sure to what extent these leaks actually damage sales in the long run.

If i am not totally mistaken, Doom 3 got leaked because someone "stole" it at the E3 or so.

Sometimes i really wonder if the studios let those "leaks" come out on purpose? I know its bad for business, but its like that unnofficial Demo. In my opinion, its more "fun" to play a leak than a Demo, and i like leaks somehow. Furthermore, they dont have to do extra programming for a demo and it gives it quite some publicity, when almost all big gaming web sites have a huge "DOOM 3 LEAKED" on their main page. Hidden advertisment?

Just my 2 cents :)

Probably people who get to the software before they get to the store. TruckdriverS? [grin]

Some person from Halo 2 came up with the possibility that someone from the factory where the cd's were boing copied stole one/a few.

I've got a good feeling the companies are letting it out, because they are all big name games and the extra publicity will do them wonders. A few sales that they don't make will easily be recovered.

On the otherhand if people are stealing them, e.g. truck drivers or other people between the developer and the store this is bound to happen. But the amount of copies that sneak out could not really be that high. Someone stealing doom3 from E3 kinda gets me though. You would think the company would keep one of the biggest releases over the last few years kept tightly closeby at all times... unless they wanted it to get out.

All in all i can see this thread turning into something resembling a government conspiracies thread =D

From a developement leak like HL2, I would suggest having dev PCs and desk/office PCs. The office PCs can be used for documentation, email, internet, etc. and the dev PCs are on a private internal network with absolutely no connection to the outside world. I know many companies (not game companies though) that do this sort of thing and some even have entire rooms that are secured with the dev PCs in there.

LOL, probably someone with a telescope typing the code over as the programmers at Valve write it! [wink] Hmm.. game data.. Huh?!

I have never found a developer that was willing to let their code out as some sort of demo. In all the cases I have encountered the leaks were
i. Copies pinched from shows
ii. Review/preview copies taken from magazines
iii. Copies taken from the duplicators
iv. Copies that were sent to the distributor to encourage orders which they then leaked.

I've seen Mircosoft Game Studio employees give top selling AAA games away before as a promotion, it was at an official presentation on game development. If companies do this why would they leak games?

Not sure I understand your point.

If it is a top selling game then it is already published and pirates can go and buy a copy to hack it and distribute it. If you mean a game that will become a top selling game, being given out prior to release then that is what we are talking about above. It is Publishers like Microsoft that give out early copies to generate sales which are then leaked - it isn't the developers.