Leaks are a damaging thing, whether they happen in the fields of sport, television, movies, or gaming. When a crucial detail about the plot of a forthcoming film leaks to the press or is broadcast across social media, the potential box office revenue of that film drops like a stone. People feel less inclined to pay to see a story they already know the ending of, and it can be hugely damaging to the company who paid to make the movie. Sony’s ‘The Last Of Us 2’ might be a video game rather than a film, but the company has just discovered the harm that leaks can do.
A few days ago, crucial details from the story of ‘The Last Of Us 2’ leaked onto the internet – seemingly published by someone who was connected to the development of the game. It was the ultimate act of betrayal, and the fact that it’s happened at all has led to rumors that some of the game’s development team have good reason to feel that they’ve been ill-treated by their employer. Whether that’s true or not, the damage has already been done. We won’t spoil things for anyone by repeating any of the leaked information here, but suffice to say that if you’ve seen them, you’ve already had several potential surprises ruined.
It’s hard to overstate the success of the original ‘The Last Of Us,’ which hit the shelves in 2013. It sold almost one and a half million copies within the first few days of its release, and eventually became the biggest gaming event of the whole year. A ‘remastered’ edition followed, and it led to a revival in the concept of zombies as characters. It’s hard to imagine that the popular ‘Zombie Hoard’ game on online slots websites would have been created if it weren’t for ‘The Last Of Us.’ There was even talk at one point that there would be an official ‘The Last Of Us’ online slots game, as we’ve seen with several other big-name gaming releases, but there’s been no sign of it so far. There will, however, be a TV series in 2021. Whether it’s 2020 casinos or TV shows, it’s clear that the game has become a brand – and a brand that’s worth big money.
As much as fans were looking forward to the release of the new game, there were signs in recent months that they were becoming frustrated with the long wait for its release. If things had run on schedule, it would already have been released in February of this year. In October 2019, Sony announced that meeting the original release date wouldn’t be possible, and so it slipped back to the end of May. From there, it slipped back again – this time with the dreaded word ‘indefinitely’ attached to the information – and at this point, someone decided to take matters into their own hands. The leak happened, and faced with the prospect of people knowing too much about the story long before anyone got the chance to play through it, Sony changed their minds again and announced that they would release the game on June 19th.
Aside from the leaks being bad news for the team that worked on the game, they’re also bad news for Sony’s PlayStation console. In an era where developers release games across multiple platforms to maximize their potential returns, exclusive content is rare. Not only are most games playable on both the PlayStation and the Xbox, but they’re also now often playable on Google’s new Stadia platform, too. ‘The Last Of Us 2’ is a PlayStation-only release, and Sony was hoping that it would provide one final spike in the sales of their aging PS4 console before it gives way to the brand-new PS5 toward the end of this year. Whether there’s a significant effect on sales remains to be seen, but the leaks certainly won’t have helped its prospects.
Neil Druckmann, the vice-president of the Naughty Dog studio who worked on the game for Sony, tweeted his disappointment that the leaks had happened, but also expressed his opinion that the leaks don’t tell the full story. Even though people can, if they wish, now find the ending of the game online, it doesn’t paint the full picture of how the characters get there or what happens to them on the way. He’s confident that the game will still prove to be rewarding for fans even if they’re aware of its destination, and they’ll have a great time playing it. If the (spectacularly violent) trailers that have already been released are anything to go by, he’s probably right in that assertion.
If ‘The Last Of Us 2’ proves to be a sales success upon its release – which seems like an inevitability even if people have seen the leaks and spoilers – it would be fair to assume that it will also be ‘remastered’ within the next year or two. The original game came out very close to the end of the PlayStation 3’s life, and the subsequent ‘remastered’ version took advantage of the greater technical capabilities of the PlayStation 4 to provide players with better graphics and a few improved gameplay mechanics. As the PlayStation 5 will be released less than six months after ‘The Last Of Us 2,’ it would make sense for the same thing to happen again. Given that the game is a Sony in-house production, the development team may even be working on that version of the game on developer kit versions of the PS5 console as we speak. Players who’d completed the PS3 version of the first game still purchased the second to play it again because they enjoyed it so much – and so it doesn’t necessarily follow that people won’t buy it just because they already know what to expect from it.
This isn’t the way that Sony wanted to bring the game to the market, but it’s the way that it’s happened, and so that’s how both they and the game’s fans are going to have to deal with it. Hopefully, by the time June arrives, the internet buzz about the spoilers will have become a thing of the past, and people will be able to enjoy the game without worrying about what’s already been given away.