Eli5: How are leaks from video games found inside the game’s files before it’s even released?
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It’s just code, that’s readable but not accessible while playing the game.
Ex. In Skyrim, with console command you can go to that room that has a chest with everything. Now image playing on XBOX, that room is still there just impossible to access.
Testers “read” the code to see what’s there but not accessible in game.
I only know from Pokemon specifically but it’s probably the same with other franchises.
-Some titles allow you to pre-download the game so that you can launch them right away day-of. However, to my knowledge, the security on these types of downloads is generally too tight to crack quickly, so most leaks come from other things.
-Some games release playable demos as part of advertising/promotion. Often, the demos copy over large portions of the original game’s code, and end up including spoilery things. For example, Pokemon Sun and Moon’s demo contained all of the full game’s new species within its files.
-Usually games start leaking hard in the weeks before launch due to stores selling them early. Stores have to sign agreements not to give anybody copies between delivery and launch, but sometimes those agreements get secretly broken. Then if there’s no heavy encryption on the disc, whoever gets the game can play it themselves on an offline console, and/or upload the files directly online for others to dissect.
The simple answer is that some files and data will be included before the main update that enables all the functionality. For example, the graphical assets could be finished and deployed in an update you download before the other development with new functionality is ready to use them.
It depends as people mentioned. In the older days of piracy games would sometimes be leaked a month early. Oddly enough with more of a shift to digital, its harder to get things early because digital has more security to it, whereas before someone in a warehouse or factory would “borrow” the cartridge or disc for a moment to copy it, and put it back.
Sometimes the games files are there with the hidden items just not enabled. Best example I can think of is Street Fighter X Tekken. It came out for xbox360 and I think Ps3, with a pending PS Vita release with exclusive characters for some time frame like 3 months, then released to other systems. People realized you could enable them all in the xbox/ps3 versions on day 1 with an edit because everything was already there.
Likewise sometimes this backfires and people see the files for a new character, but later on there becomes a licensing issue so the content never comes to be.
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