Destructoid Checkpoint: Rockstar's leaky ship

There are two big stories this week, both of which are about games that are not coming out for a little while yet, but it’s good to have the headlines filled with games that are in development instead of the firing of the people who are making them.

The bad news is that one of these games is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Let’s dive in.

The GTA 6 leaks

The worst possible thing that can happen in the run-up to the release of a game is that you end up dealing with leaks. It can destroy years of careful planning and hype-building, and it spoils the hard work of so many devs who work incredibly hard, usually with the aim of enjoying a well-planned reveal and the potential positive feedback from fans. 

This week saw multiple apparent leaks around GTA 6 from a group called CyberLeeks, who claimed they are protesting the lack of physical releases and the exclusive content that rests behind the more expensive version of the game.

These are, I think, honorable issues. Gamers are correct to be deeply worried about the obvious shift away from physical media that means they will not be able to actually own any of their games. There is a reason I buy a variety of physical formats for my music, movies, and games, but beyond the fun ritualistic nature of physical interaction with art, there is the simple fact that nobody can come to my house and decide that I no longer own them.

As such, I very much understand the moral argument for weaponized leaks to further consumer rights; I just have a hard time agreeing that it needed to be done at the expense of all the hard-working developers who have built the game, while also pushing your crypto coin. 

You see, CyberLeek is a cryptocurrency memecoin that the leakers keep pushing with every release, with the idea that it will fund some kind of secret project. The leakers have already been accused of drip-feeding leaks to inflate the value of their memecoin, and of the whole thing being essentially a scam wrapped up as consumer activism. 

It is an impossibly complicated situation as the leaks have yet to really be proven true, the consumer rights angle doesn’t really mesh with the crypto coin pushing, and, as yet, nobody knows who is behind the leaks or can understand what their true motivations really are.

It is the messiest of messy stories, but if, as a write-up from the GTA Forums implies, all this does roll back to a single crypto wallet, it likely won’t be that long until the necessary information is subpoenaed and someone gets arrested. 

Remember, Take Two and Rockstar have employed the services of private investigators in the past, and a 2022 GTA 6 source code leak saw them bringing in police in both America and England. 

This will not end well for the folks involved.

The Duskbloods

FromSoftware is probably my favorite developer in the modern era. They make unapologetically difficult games, both gameplay- and story-wise, and seem happy to work their groove rather than attempt to reinvent the wheel with each game. 

The Duskbloods is one of their more interesting projects because the Switch 2-exclusive title will venture into the realm of structured PvPvE. Fighting other people in Soulsborne games has always been a really fun part of those titles, and the community developed fun habits, with unwritten rules of engagement to keep things honorable, and also to add even more drama to any backstabbing, literal or otherwise, that might have taken place.

Some parts of the game world would just organically become PvP arenas. Word would rapidly spread about spots where you could go and find people willing to fight you. Anor Londo, Darkroot Garden, and Oolacile Township were all popular spots in the original Dark Souls, and each game spawned its own arenas that became the places to go if you want to throw down at different levels.

What is really fun in The Duskbloods is that players gather up resources and complete objectives to earn Virtue, and the lowest-scoring players get culled over a number of rounds. The final three get transported to an arena, and then everyone fights to the death.

I’m not saying that this was 100% inspired by the community approach to PvP, but it’s nice to think that the folks at FromSoftware are continuing to iterate on how players behave and approach their games by formalizing that behavior into actual in-game mechanics in one of their games. 

I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Duskbloods when it was announced, but much like Nightreign, it appears that the team is experimenting with something that will actually just be a huge amount of fun. I’ve never been particularly good at Soulsborne PvP, if I am honest, but it is something that I have very much enjoyed, and it seems the true spirit of it will be alive and well in The Duskbloods. 

What’s happening, Destructoid?

Scott Duwe feels a little more dubious about the upcoming Duskblood than I do, but I’m sure he will fall in love, eventually. - “Beyond that, and this is the core issue that worries me, Duskblood's gameplay is a PvPvE experience, reminiscent of an extraction shooter or battle royale game. You choose from a selection of hero-like characters with their own weapons and abilities, and enter into an eight-person match where you basically need to score points (they’re called Virtue) by defeating human and AI enemies.”

Andrej Barovic has a valid concern about publishers' apparent eagerness to erase the past to make room for remasters. - “The practice of removing an original game so its remake or remaster, usually the latter, can then be sold as the sole edition of the game has always really irked me. For years now, publishers have been participating in doing this, and it seems that it’s essentially become an unfortunate norm in the industry.”

And that’s it for this week.