Unidentified hackers appear to have been responsible for the massive leak of The Last of Us Part 2 months ahead of the game’s release, according to multiple reports. Those hackers reportedly gained access to files relating to The Last of Us Part 2 by exploiting a vulnerability in previous games developed by Naughty Dog.

 

In late April, key, spoiler-filled plot points and level details from The Last of Us Part 2 were posted to YouTube, revealing much of the story from Naughty Dog’s upcoming PlayStation 4 game. A statement from Sony Interactive Entertainment said that the persons responsible for that leak were not affiliated with Naughty Dog or SIE.

 

On Saturday, a Twitter user who goes by the name Pixelbutts posted information pointing to how that leak happened, saying that hackers took advantage of a vulnerability in game code from The Last of Us to access and download server data. Pixelbutts says they were aware of the vulnerability and attempts to download Naughty Dog game data from Amazon web servers for months, and informed the developer of the security exploit in February.

 

A report from Kotaku (and former Kotaku reporter Jason Schreier, citing sources at Naughty Dog) appears to validate Pixlebutts’ accounting of the hack. “Short version: hackers found a security vulnerability in a patch for an older ND game and used it to get access to ND’s servers,” Schreier wrote on Twitter.

 

We’ve reached out to Sony Interactive Entertainment for an update on the leak and to confirm details of the hack, and will update when the company responds.

 

The Last of Us Part 2 is coming to PS4 on June 19, after a brief delay

A pair of leaks have turned up on 4Chan that claim to outline details of Rockstar's forthcoming Grand Theft Auto 6. Fans of the franchise would do well to take these rumors with a grain of salt as there's no way to know for sure if any of these details are accurate. The leaker on 4Chan goes by Rhanadeng and claims to have been a friend of a disgruntled employee working on the game during 2019.

The leaker claims that this employee allegedly asked him to anonymously leak information about GTA 6. However, things later improved, and he lost contact with the Rockstar team member. One key detail is that this person also claims the game has been in full active development since 2016 or 2017, with pre-production starting shortly after GTA V was ported to current generation consoles in 2014. The GTA VI game world map is also claimed to be the size of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 combined.

One of the odder bits that the leaker claims is a minigame where players control a stream of urine from a protagonist using motion controls. On the protagonist front, there are said to be four in the game, including a driver called Walther Wallace and an unnamed former Israeli IDF person. Another, Thomas Branigan, is a smuggler who owns an aircraft called the Raven, and Marcus Burke is a drug dealer and father to a young son.

The area is said to be based on Florida with Vice City among the three major cities with one smaller city in the far northwest of the map. The game is said to jump around in time with part set in the 1980s and part set in the present day. Missions aren't as linear as they are in GTA V or RDR2, says the leaker. Players will briefly visit a small central American island, but it's reportedly not Guarma. The game starts with players playing as the smuggler Branigan.

Supposedly there are multiple child characters in the game that mainly interact with Burke and his son. Switching between the protagonists isn't said to be instant, but the camera reportedly zooms out and travels quickly to where the protagonist the player wants to play is located. Sleeping Dogs inspired parkour is involved in the game as well, but to a lesser extent without wall running. The leaker claims that weapons function more realistically in the game than they have in past titles. An example is the rocket launcher back blast, killing an NPC in one of the missions where the goal is to destroy a helicopter.

Hand-to-hand combat is supported and is said to be similar to Red Dead 2, with the leaker noting it's harder to fight hand-to-hand GTA VI than in GTA V. Player characters can gain weight in the game, and it affects attributes as it did in RDR2. Mori Kibbutz is also reportedly in the game with nothing else known about that character.

This leak isn't the first that has surfaced about GTA 6. Last December, a leaker on Reddit claiming to be a beta tester leaked a bunch of alleged details of the game. In January, another leak claimed that the game would launch in 2021.

Tags:  Grand Theft Auto, GTA, Rockstar-Games, (NASDAQ:TTWO), gta 6, gta vi