In the modern world, information flows can carry not only useful and interesting information, but also a lot of clickbait, fakes, errors and weak fact-checking. Each author of such texts has a lot of reasons why he did it this way and not otherwise: he unconditionally trusts the source, is too lazy to check information, copies or rewrites other people’s texts without thinking, wants attention to his person, or simply has a great imagination. Or perhaps he simply did not understand the meaning of the original text and wrote his own version of events.
I would like to talk about five cases in 2024 when news related to the gaming industry turned out to be not the most reliable. Each case differs in scale, reasons for its occurrence, as well as the reaction of the gaming media and players.
Hack Epic Games Store
One of the most sensational news at the end of February 2024 was the message about the hacking of the Epic Games Store, during which hackers obtained email addresses, passwords, payment information and many other internal data. This event was widely covered in a variety of publications: from small blogs to major world media. Epic Games has officially commented on this situation and assured that it will conduct a thorough investigation. And the scammers even told some experts that they doubted the authenticity of the hack.
But after 6 days the situation received a rather unexpected outcome. The attackers themselves confirmed that the claim that Epic Games had been hacked was false, and that the main target was those who would like to purchase the stolen data. In the process, the cunning scheme managed to deceive 8 other hackers and get “tens of thousands of dollars.”
NEXON is making an MMORPG based on Game of Thrones
The source of this somewhat erroneous news from April 28, 2024 was the portal Redanian Intelligence. The author of the article indicated the developer and named some details of the project being developed: events will unfold somewhere around the 4-5 season of the television series, and players will be able to meet some key characters. After about two days, the text was changed, and it was clarified that the game was actually being made by Netmarble, and the source simply mixed up the two companies. But by this time, many had already written news about this event, and someone even passed it off as a fait accompli.
I could go on for a long time about why NEXON doesn’t do such projects, but I’d better ask: did everyone add clarifications to their news or write a refutation of the original rumor? After all, the news was corrected by May 1, and enough days have passed since the error was corrected. As practice shows, news is still appearing that NEXON is making an MMORPG based on Game of Thrones.
Dune: Awakening screenshots leaked online
Funcom’s new game is generating a lot of interest among players, especially among Western audiences. And that’s why all sorts of rumors and discussions sometimes pop up around the game. One of these topics was several images posted on Reddit April 30, 2024. Surprisingly, the author does not call them any real leaks, but simply writes that he “was able to get them.” But for some reason, some people called this post a real “leak” and published loud headlines. However, these screenshots are simply taken from the official news in Steam and video from youtubepublished back on April 10.
But you could determine the authenticity of these screenshots simply by selecting “Search emage with Google” in the Chrome browser. And among the first results there will be a link to the official news. Fortunately, only a small number of people paid attention to this news, and it was more modest than about Game of Thrones.
NCSOFT caught violating South Korean laws
This news was raised mainly in the CIS segment, and it is very difficult to find it on Western resources. And there is a logical explanation for this. The fact is that nothing has been officially revealed or proven. The Korea Fair Trade Commission simply came with inspections on April 22, 2024. This is standard procedure upon receipt of a complaint. What the KFTC will find, when it will be announced and what the punishment will be – all this is still unknown. In most cases, such situations end with orders to correct the identified comments and compensate the players for damages. The situation with NEXON can be called record-breaking and significant: the company received a fine of 10% of profits.
Statements about proven violations of the country’s laws at this stage of the investigation are tantamount to slander and can easily lead to court action. However, NCSOFT is busy with its own affairs and cares little about what is written and said abroad, in a region that is not the most profitable.
The investigation was initially reported by a South Korean portal MTN, and all statements were within the framework of “came from checks of some internal studios, this may be related to super accounts or incorrect display of chances for obtaining items.” How people saw this as a 100% violation and the fines already imposed remains unclear.
GTA VI
GTA VI and “rumor” have become synonymous words for some users. For many years we watched a series of endless “announcement soon”, and in the end we received a leak of an early build of the game and the hype about the mental health of the person that spread this data. People began to study the leaked data and try to find interesting moments, including the actors who acted as prototypes for the main characters or who voiced them. And after the first trailer, which was published shortly after the next leak, searches and rumors resumed with renewed vigor. It is known that the game will have two main characters: Lucia and Jason. Fans have already attributed a number of actors to these roles:
- JasonStars: Brent Antonello, Brian Zampella, Troy Baker, Dylan Rourke.
- LuciaStars: Manny Perez, Anna Espacito, Leslie Leuvet, Alexandra Cristina Echavarri.
Players mostly discuss these assumptions on Reddit and other social platforms. And there are suggestions that the search will not end there, as people will continue to attribute their favorite actor to work on the game.
Separately, we can recall the recent “dispute” between two major Western publications about the progress of the game’s development. In March 2024 Kotaku reported that the developers were having problems and the game would not be released until 2026. A few days later, the editor of Insider Gaming reported X(Twitter)that development is going according to plan and the release will be in 2025. After this, Kotaku clarified that the release was postponed from the beginning to autumn 2025. And all this is based on their insiders and sources who are familiar with the affairs of Rockstar Games.
Dear readers, be careful and do not trust all the news, rumors and insiders that you see on the Internet. And if you see inaccurate information on our portal, be sure to write to us about it. Because we can all make mistakes.