Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How YouTube leaks became so common — and what it means for Google | TechCrunch Minute”.
Today’S story brings together two topics that are always talked about in the same sentence: corporate Espionage and Yoshi. There have been a lot of gaming related YouTube leaks. Over the years there was the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer, which Rockstar Games was forced to release earlier than planned, because someone leaked it, things still worked out for Rockstar, though the trailer was so hotly anticipated that it broke the record for most YouTube views in 24 Hours with over 85 million, but this wasn’t an isolated incident in 2017, someone who claimed to be the friend of a Google employee posted a photo to Reddit, which showed an unpublished, trailer of the unannounced Yoshi game. Yoshi’S crafted world for the Nintendo switch 404 media obtained a database of privacy and security issues that Google employees flagged internally and Yoshi was one of those issues. This only reinforces reporting from Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson, whose sources told him that these leaks continue to be an issue at Google, which owns YouTube even just last. Last week, the list of games to be announced at PlayStation’s, stateof playay event got leaked ahead of time. These leaks happen when companies like Nintendo and Playstation schedule their big announcement videos to YouTube.
Apparently these scheduled uploads aren’t as secure as they seem as one Anonymous employee told Henderson. Your videos are not just watched for monetization approval. They are watched by employees all the time. In the gaming world, it’s kind of an Open Secret that a lot of leaks happen due to unlisted private and scheduled videos on YouTube, there’s even a whole subreddit dedicated to gaming leaks and rumors, which has over 425,000 members.
Google has conducted multiple internal investigations on the matter, but the leaks haven’t stopped, so it doesn’t seem like Google has found a solution yet so why don’t these gaming companies just stop prescheduling their big announcements? Well, usually, it takes a while for a video to upload in high quality, and if the companies want to brief journalists, then sending them a link is usually easier than sending massive video files. Is it really the end of the world? If we know a little bit early about the new Yoshi game, no, but there’s a lot more important information on Google’s internal servers than just release dates for new games. The fact of the matter is internal. Google employees are leaking information and they’re getting away with it.
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