Content Leak / Video Games

Games with their own page:

• Fire Emblem Heroes
• Pokémon
• Vs Sonic.exe

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By Convention:

• The Electronic Entertainment Expo was victim to this in 2019, as Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft, and Square Enix all saw their announcements revealed ahead of time on Twitter by a leaker known as Sabi. Nintendo's E3 Direct was left alone due to their lawyers stopping the leaker, Sabi, via a cease-and-desist beforehand.

By Studio:

• Atlus:
  • Atlus USA accidentally leaked the existences of localizations for Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux, and Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology by uploading their respective pages too early.
  • Atlus Japan accidentally revealed the release date as well as more info of ‘’Shin Megami Tensei V’’ by updating its website 2 weeks before E3 2021.
  • Two games in the Persona series, Persona 3 Reload, and Persona 5 Tactica, had their reveal trailers revealed early on Atlus's Instagram account, with the trailers originally meant to debut at the 2023 Xbox Showcase.
• Nintendo saw a massive amount of internal server data leaked over the course of 2020. Dubbed the "Gigaleak," it contained terabytes of data going back to the late 1980s. This included the source code, early prototypes, and assets for dozens of games such as Super Mario 64 and almost every mainline Pokémon installment, information on the cancelled titles such as Retro Studios' "Sheik" game, as well as documentation concerning scrapped peripherals and even consoles (such as a Nintendo 3DS follow-up that was abandoned in favor of the Nintendo Switch).

By Game:

• Sometimes, data for upcoming Arcaea events or releases is embedded into the game data and is unlocked when it communicates with the game server on or after the release time. One player discovered, through API manipulation, that they could buy the song "SAIKYO STRONGER" a day early, which got their account permanently banned.
• Assassin's Creed has had a long, long history of leaks, to the point it's basically become a tradition for the series's next entry to have many, many details leaked prior to their announcements and leaks. The sole exception to this rule is Assassin's Creed II.
  • The original game was leaked due to people noticing that Ubisoft had filed a trademark of the name "Assassin's Creed" with the US patent office.
  • Brotherhood was leaked because people noticed that Ubisoft had registered a domain name with the name of the game.
  • Revelations leaked when Neo GAF users were able to analyze a Facebook post from Ubisoft, revealing the game's logo.
  • Liberation has the dubious honor of being leaked twice. It was leaked prior to its announcement for the PS Vita, then it was leaked that it would receive an HD remaster for consoles and PC.
  • III was informally unveiled to the world due to a Best Buy employee leaking the details of the game from an internal report, revealing the setting and protagonist.
  • Black Flag was leaked because someone noticed that a Ubisoft employee in front of them had the details of the game open on their laptop, and snapped a picture.
  • Unity was leaked when screenshots and information surfaced via Kotaku and spread online, announcing the game's Parisian setting and enhanced parkour.
  • Rogue was leaked under its codename of Comet by anonymous sources, and confirmed that the player would take the role of a Templar.
  • Syndicate leaked under the codename of Victory and was shown via a series of screenshots that showed the Victorian London setting.
  • Origins was leaked under its codename of Empire via early build screenshots that showcased a character previously seen in artwork from Black Flag.
  • Odyssey got so, so, so close to being revealed without any kind of leak... Only for a picture of a promotional keychain to surface just before E3 and reveal the game's name and setting of Greece.
  • Valhalla leaked through listings on websites like Game Stop under the name of Ragnarok.
• Blood's Alpha and its source code were leaked in a computer repair shop in 1996, which made their way on the internet. Monolith Productions later mandated that if employees were going to a computer repair shop, another of the staff had to go with them to prevent leaks.
• Stills from the announcement trailer of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time were posted anonymously on 4chan before the game was officially revealed on June 22, 2020. The franchise's official Twitter acknowledged and made fun of the leaks.
  Official reveal > leaks, promise 😉
• Early April 2020, Crytek was teasing an announcement for an upcoming game, but on April 16, a website for Crysis Remastered was discovered before it went public. This was coupled with one of Intel's Twitter accounts posting a teaser trailer for the game, and then quickly pulling it. It was made official later in the day.
• The first DLC for Dark Souls III was accidentally released a couple days early on Xbox One.
• Shortly after the arcade release of Daytona Championship USA, SEGA had accidentally leaked the entire game on their own website as part of an update patch for arcade vendors to download. The patch contained the full game, and with some modifications, could be played on a PC.
• Destiny 2 has had more than its fair share of leaks:
  • As early as before 2018, voicelines related to Cayde-6 dying were found in the game's files.
  • A series of updates to the game's API accidentally leaked several armor sets from Forsaken in summer 2018, including the Reverie Dawn armor, whose lore spoils the existence of Riven, the last and Taken Ahamkara.
  • Update 2.0 ended up leading to the discovery of all lore entries in Forsaken. This includes Truth to Power, which cannot be legitimately collected until a grand total of 30 weeks after a player finds the first entry, assuming they stop to collect it at every possible opportunity.
  • Similarly, Update 2.1 leaked entries for Black Armory and The Dawning. Moreover, it also ended up leaking a cutscene spoiling a major plot twist which would not be available in-game for several weeks after its discovery.
  • Outside of datamining, the exact rewards for the Black Armory, Joker's Wild, and Penumbra preludes, all of which are exotic quests, were leaked before their official reveals by an anonymous source.
• The Compilation Re-release Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King was leaked a day before its official unveiling by someone attending a GameStop corporate event.
• Doki Doki Literature Club!: The existence of the Updated Re-release Plus was leaked through some composer credits that were inadvertently posted online well before it was officially revealed, leading to a member of Team Salvato addressing the issue on the game's subreddit.
• For some reason, Apple has had a bad habit of leaking content for Dragon Ball Legends, as they used key art of Ultra Instinct -Sign- Goku VS Jiren to advertise the Battle Pass system, which at the time has not even been announced through the in-game News tab. And then it got worse come the 4th anniversary, where they used the main card art for Ultra Instinct Goku A WEEK BEFORE he was even announced by the developers themselves in order to advertise said celebration. It got to the point where among the player base, the headlining Legends Limited Ultra Instinct Goku unit was considered to be Toshi's worst kept secret.
• The Elder Scrolls Online had a closed beta with a strict NDA for over half a year prior to release. Someone recorded footage of one of the earlier betas with the game set to its lowest graphics settings, which put many off the game early on as it was a bad first impression. This resulted in all later betas having your username splashed everywhere in semi-transparent text across the screen so that they could catch future leakers.
• In Everybody Edits Flash, leaks usually come in two forms: unfinished content left in the game intended for a future update, and text found in private update worlds through hacking.
  • In early 2012, pictures of the Industrial Pack, Metal Plate backgrounds, and Robot smiley from the PlayerIO website were leaked by capasha. In the same thread, they would later leak coin gates, pipes, the LOL smiley, badges, and woots across 2012.
  • Former game owner NVD accidentally leaked the names of the Gingerbread, Caroler, Elf, and Nutcracker smileys in a screenshot before they were released December 2014.
  • The 2016 April Fools' Day update had some data left in that revealed the Fairytale Pack plus three new smileys: Sick, Unsure, and Goofy. All of this properly added to the game less than two hours after this was discovered.
  • A forum user found the Summer 2016 update world before it was intended, containing some private info about the content of the update, such as a new pack, three new smileys, and new white blocks.
  • The Aviator, Sleepy, and Seagull smileys were discovered in August 2016 before their proper release.
  • The then-hidden badge for the Summer campaign was found on the files of Everybody Edits's website.
  • In September 2016, info about the Mine Pack, Textile Backgrounds, and Restaurant Decorations were leaked in addition to an unfinished version of the update's Loading Screen.
  • The November 2016 update was leaked, including the info of a Construction Pack, Black Aura, three new smileys, and an unfinished new Loading Screen.
  • The Spy and Devil Skull smileys were leaked November 5, 2016. A day later, the Perpetual Frustration campaign was leaked, which would give out said Devil Skull smiley as a prize.
  • The existence of a gravity-flipping effect block was leaked April 7, 2017.
  • In August 2017, the Journey campaign was leaked by Luka504. The next day, the Lion and Racoon smileys, as well as the stop sign and fire hydrant blocks were leaked by Zoey2070.
  • In October 2017, part of an update world was leaked. The world contained the names of the Dungeon Pack, Zombie NPC, Banshee, Executioner, and Gargoyle smileys, as well as mentioning the Cave backgrounds being extended, new faceplates, and a gray aura.
  • In November 2017, capasha leaked the internal titles and badges of the Earth and Space badges.
  • In April 2019, capasha leaked the Gold Dragon smiley.
• During the initial launch of Fate/Grand Order, dataminers found a huge list detailing every single planned character to be implemented along with a huge amount of leftover artwork and sprites that had yet to be implemented in the actual game, allowing the fanbase to predict when characters would be released and certain parts of the story long before it would actually happen.
• Final Fantasy XIV has content leaked nearly all the time thanks to people datamining the game after each major patch goes live. The reveal of new combat jobs and races were leaked from the dataminers. During the last major patch for the Stormblood expansion, there was a content leak by complete accident due to a glitch. A specific NPC in the French version of the game had a bug that had him list off every single playable race and it also included the yet revealed Hrothgar race, which completely spoiled the surprise before the reveal at the 2019 Toyko Fanfest.
• The existence of Fire Emblem Engage was leaked months before its reveal, with few photographs showing off the main character and plot tidbits involving characters from prior games. Only thing that didn't leak was the title.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
  • Several plot and character details were leaked on Reddit, including the in-game Time Skip.
  • Chris Niosi announced he was playing male Byleth mere days before he was allowed to, therefore breaking his NDA. Niosi was then removed from the game and replaced by Zach Aguilar.
• The very existence of the Switch port of Fortnite was prematurely revealed by mistake by a ratings board and a datamined eShop update, a few weeks before the official reveal at E3 2018.
• Granblue Fantasy:
  • With the use of data mining, social network sites and community threads, A lot of players already knew that Olivia would become a playable character weeks before Cygames made the official annoucement of her release.
  • An update in March 2018 accidentally opened a free raid quest meant for high-level players. It is playable for a few hours, but had numerous glitches such as untranslated Japanese text, Uriel's art as a placeholder, very few attack scripts, and no loot rewards. The raid in question revealed that Shiva would become a raid boss battle. Cygames quickly advised players not to participate in the raid for the risk of player data corruption. It was removed the day after.
• Grand Theft Auto franchise:
  • Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition was unintentionally leaked through Kotaku writing about an upcoming "heavily-modded aesthetic" GTA Trilogy remaster using Unreal Engine 4 set for Fall 2021 to coincide with the 20th anniversary for Grand Theft Auto III. Then the GTA net Twitter account found three pieces of code for something called gta3/vs/sa unreal added to the Rockstar Games Launcher, and on September 30, 2021 the trilogy's title was prematurely revealed via the Korean Ratings board. Members of GTAForums discovered all the achievement icons for each of the three games, new logos for The Definitive Edition, and the backgrounds for the games' Rockstar Launcher pages all obtained from Rockstar's servers. This led to a proper teaser of the collection on October 8 which then had the leaks extend to achievement descriptions, the system requirements, an unlisted Rockstar Games support page containing the game's final product description, a November 11 release date, and a physical edition aimed for a December release date all before Rockstar confirmed any of the info. On October 22, the official reveal trailer and website went up, confirmed the remastered trilogy to be real and netting it the nickname of gaming's worst kept secret.
  • Grand Theft Auto VI had not one, not two, but three of these.
    • The first one occurred on September 18, 2022. After years of speculation about the next mainline title after Grand Theft Auto V, a hacker leaked dozens upon dozens of videos and screenshots showcasing an early yet comprehensive and playable build of the next installment in the series, which confirmed the names of the game's two protagonists (Jason and Lucia, the latter being the first canonical female protagonist in GTA history) and the setting being Vice City in the present day, showed off actual gameplay complete with voice acting for the characters, and much, much more. It quickly went down as one of the largest and most infamous leaks in video game history, and it reached the point where it was confirmed directly by Rockstar Games that, unlike many past "leaks" that were nothing more than fan-made content, this one was the real deal, in the process forcing them to all but officially announce that the game was in development.
    • It happened again on December 2, 2023, just three days before the release of the game's first trailer. This time, it came courtesy of the ultimate insider source: the son of Rockstar North co-studio head Aaron Garbut, who took a video of his father's work showing off what looked like downtown Vice City and posted it on TikTok. In addition to the video, the leaker also posted details about the map, saying that Vice City would be twice the size of Los Santos, that there would be three major cities and four smaller ones separated by countryside, and that there would be a large lake in the center of the map.
    • The first trailer for the game ended up being leaked just 15 hours before its scheduled premiere, compelling Rockstar to officially release the trailer an hour later.
• Half-Life 2 had an early build leaked online in October of 2003 after a hacker broke into Valve's servers.
• Hearthstone has something of history of this.
  • Four legendary cards from Goblins vs. Gnomes, Hearthstone's first expansion, were leaked a few days before their official announcement. This worked out in Blizzard's favour however - all four had (for the time period) extremely unique effects, which led to most players dismissing them as fake. Queue the hype when they were actually real.
  • A Chinese news site added information about the Journey to Un'Goro expansion before it was actually revealed. This included a shot of the card Amara, Warden of Hope as well as an explanation of the set's headline Quest mechanic.
  • Photos of eight cards from Galakrond's Awakening made their way onto a Japanese site some time before release, including the Shaman legendary weapon The Fist of Ra-den.
  • The largest one was arguably the Ashes of Outland leak in 2020. Polygon mistakenly published an article covering the Year of the Phoenix updates a day early, including information about the Priest overhaul and brand new Demon Hunter class, as well as the name of the next expansion (although none of the expansion's content). It was deleted within minutes, but the damage was done and Demon Hunters and most of their cards were public knowledge a day early.
  • Showdown at the Badlands had a pretty amusing one: a day before the official announcement, a shirt baring the expansion's logo was available for purchase from the digital Blizzcon store. It was swiftly removed, but not fast enough to stop the news from spreading. This is the first time a set was leaked by Blizzard themselves rather than a third party.
• Halo 4 got a truly bizarre one: In May 2012, before any gameplay was officially revealed, extended footage of the multiplayer was posted online...in complete Stylistic Suck form. The footage was recorded from a VHS tape with a potato-quality camcorder in what seemed to be a literal barn, and awful, ear-destroying rap music played throughout the entire thing.
• Heroes of the Storm: At the start of 2017, a list of every hero planned for the year was posted by an anonymous user. It turned out to be almost entirely correct in both which heroes and what order they'd be releasing in. The only error was missing Alexstrasza and Hanzo, and referring to Blaze as 'Firebat' and pinning his release between Kel'Thuzad and Junkrat rather than at the start of 2018 (he was likely delayed).
• Hiveswap had almost a third◊ of its Troll Call characters leaked on the second week of the features, due to a glitch on the site. This also revealed that the trolls had codenames of sorts that vaguely described their characters (e.g. Wanshi, a fan of reading, had the codename of "Book Girl").
• The existence of the upcoming Harry Potter universe RPG, Hogwarts Legacy, was leaked in September 2018, two years before its official announcement. Allegedly the group performing a focus group about it in a mall didn’t think to confiscate the participants’ phones and one of them recorded what was shown and then posted it on Reddit.
• Just Dance suffers from an extensive history of content leaks mixed with fake leaks, as songs, routines, and track lists of two separate games are leaked either in Reddit, Twitter and YouTube as soon as they are discovered. Such leaks (which also contains image files and videos) are removed by Ubisoft almost immediately upon notice, which spirals into cycles of Streisand Effect due to people believing that the leaks are genuine.
• The near-entirety of Kingdom Hearts III was leaked over a month before its official release date, as people got early retail copies. The only things missing from the leak were the two Sequel Hook stingers, as Tetsuya Nomura had considered the possibility of such a thing happening.
• Kirby Star Allies was data-mined from the demo and had many details leaked days before its official release.
  • After the first wave of Dream Friends was released, the game was data-mined again, leading to the identities of the Dream Friends in the next two waves getting discovered and leaked months before their official announcement.
• The day before its announcement and subsequent release, Kirby Fighters 2 was accidentally leaked on the Play Nintendo website. Info regarding the game was quickly taken down after info quickly spread.
• On June 9th, 2022, the Sony PlayStation online store leaked the existence of a remake of The Last of Us for PlayStation 5. Furthermore, the trailer also revealed that a PC version was in the works. This was all before the official announcement on the Summer Game Fest.
• On April 27th, 2020, two weeks after it was delayed "indefinitely" as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic messing things up, entire scenes and the level selection of The Last of Us Part II was posted on YouTube. All in all, about two hours of the game was leaked. While this may not seem like a lot of a twenty-plus hour game, huge plot points (like Joel's death) were part of the leak and some other scenes came from very late in the game. Who exactly was responsible depends on who you ask. Naughty Dog's parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment claims it was a third party data breach. However, other sources say it was an ex-ND employee as an act of revenge for their horrendous work culture, specifically not getting their last paycheck. This caused massive backlash on social media criticizing the plot (and surely enough, the game became one of the most contested sequels in the video game medium upon release over this factor) and Naughty Dog's work environment. The videos were deleted soon after. A new release date of June 19th came within a few days for damage control.
• The second episode of Life Is Strange was leaked on 4chan in February of 2015, a month before the episode's official release.
• A glitch in the release of Life Is Strange: Before the Storm's second episode caused it to be briefly available a week early on Xbox Live, allowing some fans with preorders and fast internet connections to download and play it before it was fixed.
• The Mario + Rabbids series has a history of this:
  • Rumors of a crossover between Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. and Ubisoft's Raving Rabbids began in December 2016. However, the big leak came in May 2017, when internal marketing slides from Ubisoft leaked that not only confirmed the game's existence, but revealed the game's name (Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle), genre (a mixture of Turn-Based Tactics and Adventure Game), its full character roster, and the plans for its marketing rollout leading up to an August release. All mere weeks before a scheduled reveal at that year's E3.
  • Sparks of Hope's title was leaked by a Reddit user a day before the game's official announcement. Nintendo, not to be outdone, accidentally made the game's product page on their website accessible a few hours before it was formally revealed at Ubisoft's E3 2021 presentation, revealing the game's plot in the process. To round things out the following year, Ubisoft's Latin American storefront would leak the game's October release date, a day before the game was expected to appear in a Nintendo Direct Mini Partner Showcase, as well as the planned gameplay presentation that would be taking place the day after that.
• All the new characters in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 were leaked less than a day after the reveal of the Updated Re-release when people found images of their character art in the official website.
• Monster Sanctuary's Forgotten World DLC was scheduled for 30th June 2022, but the Nintendo Switch version was accidentally released early.
• Every single Mortal Kombat 11 DLC character was leaked by datamining base game and update files. Said datamines also uncovered plans for Ash William from the Evil Dead as a DLC Guest Fighter that fell through, as he had Dummied Out character dialogue in the base game files but failed to appear by the end of the DLC's development.
• Mother 3 was leaked online just hours before it officially hit store shelves.
• MultiVersus was leaked a month before its official reveal in November 2021, and mentioned several additional characters as part of the roster, who were yet to be revealed during the initial announcement; the mere fact that the leaked roster image was quickly removed from numerous tweets due to copyright strikes gave it away it was real after all.
• The fan-game My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic saw one of their earlier beta builds get leaked by one of its testers in late 2012, starting a chain of events that ultimately led to the game being nominated for EVO 2013, which saw the game get slapped with a Cease and Desist letter. Over the next few years, the project was retooled and eventually became known as Them's Fightin' Herds.
• Being a game that receives major updates every month, this is bound to happen to My Singing Monsters.
  • A very infamous example was the leak of the Water Island Mythical, Anglow and it's Dreamthyical Pinghound.
  • The Air Island Colossal was leaked only two weeks into the Colossal Conundra.
  • The Perplexplore event was leaked one week early. This included Spurrit's sound on Fire Oasis and Epic Sneyser.
  • Seeing a new island unfortunately can't be a surprise due to people saying that there's a new island coming, thanks to game files.
• An image of Mimitchi in My Tamagotchi Forever was leaked by one of the developers and posted on Instagram a week before the official accounts revealed the character.
• NEO: The World Ends with You leaked after Square Enix accidentally sent codes to redeem the full game to those who pre-ordered it via the Square Enix store, leading to players being able to play it 10 days before release. The full game was soon dumped and datamined, as well. Square Enix eventually disabled the codes, preventing people from playing the leaked copies, but by then the damage had been done.
• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl:
  • The game's existence was prematurely revealed through a GameFly listing that went up four days before its official announcement.
  • On the day the game was announced, several retailers put up pages for pre-ordering it. Many of these pages featured a placeholder version of the game's box art, featuring silhouettes of several playable characters - including some that weren't officially announced at the time. Fans correctly identified almost all of them^note The only one that was heavily debated on was a silhouette that was later revealed as April O'Neil before the retailers replaced the image with temporary artwork that only featured the game's logo.
  • On September 1st, 2021, the Brazilian Nintendo eShop prematurely revealed the game's full box art - the same as the leaked placeholder version, but with all the characters fully visible, confirming the identities of the silhouetted characters, some of which still weren't officially revealed at the time.
  • Just after Ren and Stimpy's official reveal on September 14, 2021, the game's official Discord was hit with a massive leak showing off then-unrevealed characters and stages, most notably Toph^* Though for some reason, there were two characters that were deliberately scribbled over.. The mods quickly removed the offending posts and issued a ban on anyone talking about it, but the damage had been done. While the leaker eventually tried to claim that it was false, the Xbox Series X start-up screen accidentally showed otherwise to those who preordered the game a few days later by clearly showing Toph in the artwork, with the start-up icon for Nintendo Switch users having followed suit a week before the game's release.
  • As soon as the game was officially released, dataminers discovered the stage assets for Garfield's stage, Sweet Dreams, as well as artwork for Shredder, which all but confirmed that those two characters would be the first two DLC fighters. The dataminers also found numerous voice clips referring to characters that aren't officially revealed, but the developers stated on the game's official Discord◊ that the voice clips are "just covering bases" and not official confirmation that certain characters will be DLC.
• After being Spoiled by the Merchandise (specifically, an officially licensed carrying case that was seemingly prematurely listed on Amazon and quickly pulled), Overwatch's Nintendo Switch port got leaked twice more: once by a French retailer's internal list of titles being posted online, and once by Kotaku mere hours before the official announcement.
• Paper Mario:
  • Paper Mario: Color Splash was accidentally leaked on the Nintendo eShop when an error with digital pre-orders allowed players to access the full game two weeks ahead of its intended launch date, prompting Nintendo to pull the pre-order file down within a day.
  • Paper Mario: The Origami King was hinted at by Sabi (who was infamous for leaking numerous E3 2019 plans and almost leaked Nintendo’s own plans before being stopped by lawyers) all the way back in January 2020. The game itself was then leaked by pirates a week before release.
• An Amazon.com error with release dates resulted in some customers who had ordered the "Showtime" Premium Edition of Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth receiving it nearly two weeks in advance of its actual US release date. The cart was then subsequently dumped and uploaded to the internet before it was commercially available.
• Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid's announcement press release and trailer were leaked in January of 2019, shortly before being revealed properly. (There's speculation that the reveal was pushed up as a response to said leak, as it ended up being the exact same day of a highly-anticipated stream announcing details about Mortal Kombat 11.)
• Sakura Wars (2019):
  • Toshihiro Nagoshi, the director for the first announcement trailer, revealed on the April 2019 Sega Nama stream that because of his initial unfamiliarity with the Sakura Wars series, he was the one who accidentally revealed that Sumire Kanzaki will be featured in the game.
  • When Koch Media released the French trailer for the game, it was actually an earlier version which included a Christmas storyline as well as Kamiyama, Sakura and Clarisse discussing about the Flower Division's potential dissolution. They removed it not long after it was posted.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • SEGA prematurely released an update for the PS4 version of Sonic Mania that was intended to launch with the summer release of Sonic Mania Plus four months away. This included new animations, stage transitions and changes to a boss fight for the main game, but did not include the DLC exclusive to Plus such as the two new playable characters or the game's new "Encore Mode".
  • A playtester leaked details about Sonic Frontiers several months before it was announced, referring to it by its codename Sonic Rangers. The leak went unnoticed at the time, but resurfaced after the first teaser trailer was released and people noticed the codename in the leak matched the one used in the code for the game's website. Sure enough, most of the details ended up being correct.
• Splatoon 3 broke street date in some regions about a week before its official launch, and was subsequently leaked to the internet by pirates (who also fully completed the Return of the Mammalians single-player campaign, resulting in that getting spoiled too).
• Star Trek Online updates are often partially spoiled by IQ Fleet, a group of players that mines pre-patch data to identify new ships or missions before their official unveiling. The official forums have a ban on linking to their website.
• Street Fighter V's Season 4 DLC characters were originally planned to be revealed at finals of the EVO 2019 tournament, only for the announcement trailer to be accidentally made available on Steam days beforehand. As a result, Yoshinori Ono apologized at EVO for not having any other major announcements for the game, asking the audience to wait for the end of the year for new announcements.
• Shortly after the first gameplay trailer of Street Fighter 6 was revealed, a leak containing character art of 22 characters - including all 18 characters in the launch roster - spread around the Internet. The severity of the leak led to Capcom indirectly addressing it, more or less confirming it.
• Sugary Spire, a popular mod for Pizza Tower, had its P-rank build leaked online in March 19th, 2023.
• Nintendo's plans for celebrating the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., which included a compilation of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, were leaked back in early 2020. The compilation's existence was officially confirmed in September 2020.
• Super Mario Bros. Wonder broke street date (and was immediately leaked online) about a week before its intended release on October 20, 2023 .
• The Super Mario RPG remake, like many other Nintendo games of the time period, leaked online due to early copies mistakenly being put out for sale - though in this case it was just a few days before its official release on November 17, 2023 instead of weeks in advance.
• When the first trailer to Super Robot Wars 30 was revealed, a number of Japanese fans noticed that the video was linked to other anime series on the Bandai Channel. Fans were able to determine a possible list of series for the game, revealing three new entries to the franchise - Brave Police J-Decker, Knight's & Magic and SSSS.GRIDMAN. Two entries — the Mazinkaiser INFINITISM model and the light novel King of Kings GaoGaiGar vs. Betterman — snuck through as they had no actual anime entries.
• Super Smash Bros. is notable for having fake leaks as part of the series' pre-release culture, largely because the nature of the game means that it's easy to slap together a fake roster full of characters people want for free attention. But sometimes, someone will strike gold and reveal what they know for that sweet, sweet internet cred. Here's some particularly notable ones:
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The ChaosZero leak, where the user in question revealed, among other things, the addition of Sonic the Hedgehog. He was derided at first due to having a reputation as a Troll, but as his leak steadily came true as more things were revealed, he would become known as the game's prophet.
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U:
    • The controversial Gematsu leaks, where one of the site's writers reported information delivered to him regarding the game's roster, including the outlandish addition of the Wii Fit Trainer. The leak named several characters who would go on to be revealed, but was discredited close to the game's release - it stated that Chrom from Fire Emblem: Awakening would be playable, but instead it was revealed that Robin and Lucina would be playable instead, Chrom appearing only as part of Robin's Final Smash. In addition, another named character (the Chorus Men from Rhythm Heaven) ultimately ended up being a bust, though there are Dummied Out files within the game that suggest they may have been scrapped.
    • The game had its base game roster and several gameplay screenshots leaked by a member of the ESRB. Said roster also included Shulk, Bowser Jr. and Duck Hunt, who weren't revealed at the time. The rater would later face legal trouble because of it.
    • A video uploaded by Nintendo of Japan in August of 2014 has one of the scenes in the "slideshow" around the 56-second mark shows Ganondorf offscreen while Pikachu is taunting. Ganondorf had yet to be revealed, but was shown off in the aforementioned "ESRB leak". The video was later unlisted and reuploaded with a version that had Ganondorf taken out.
    • The return of Roy from Fire Emblem and the addition of Ryu from Street Fighter as DLC characters was spoiled by dataminers, who found songs in the game's files that named both characters long before they were announced. These songs ended up being their victory tunes when they were properly released. And speaking of the release, a prominent Wii U hacker was able to download the update containing the new characters the night before their official release and show gameplay of both of them, Ryu in particular.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate:
    • Many details about the game were spoiler prior to its unveiling at E3 by Vergeben, a GameFAQs user. He stated that there were no cuts from 3DS/Wii U and that the long-requested Ridley of Metroid fame would finally be playable. In addition, he correctly stated that Simon Belmont from Castlevania would be a Guest Fighter, Isabelle from Animal Crossing would be Promoted to Playable, Ken from Street Fighter would be an Echo Fighter for Ryu, Incineroar from Pokémon Sun and Moon would be the new Pokémon character, there would be DLC, the Hero from Dragon Quest and the eponymous Banjo-Kazooie would be DLC characters, and Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury would be the DLC character implicated by Nintendo's copyright notice goof mentioned below. The only fighters new to Ultimate he failed to spoil up to the first DLC season pass were King K. Rool from Donkey Kong Country, the Piranha Plant from Super Mario Bros., Joker from Persona 5, Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses^note whose development was held in such secrecy that the only people privy to their existence were the development staff assigned to the character and Nintendo stockholders; however, he did correctly name the included DLC Mii costumes and all of the Echo Fighters (save Ken). He was less accurate on the second season pass, only hitting Steve from Minecraft (whom he incorrectly assumed to be part of the base game) and completely whiffing on the other five characters.
    • The night before Simon was revealed, Nintendo themselves accidentally renamed the YouTube video for the sample of "Galaga Medley" to "Bloody Tears/Monster Dance", spoiling that Castlevania would at least be getting some kind of representation. As a result, subsequent YouTube uploads of soundtrack samples had incrementing numbers as upload names to prevent a second occurrence.
    • On September 21, 2018, this image◊ of Ken was posted on 4chan that caused a lot of debate on whether or not it was real, especially since the Ken model was never traced back to any existing ones. Sure enough, the November 1st, 2018 direct not only confirmed Ken, but the model from the pic as well.
    • On September 24, 2018, an anonymous 4chan poster leaked Ken, Incineroar, and Piranha Plant, also elaborating on the Plant's playstyle. Although the leak was disbelieved at first, all three characters would be confirmed in the November 1st Direct, with Plant as DLC.
    • Two weeks before the release day, the entire ROM was leaked onto the internet thanks to Nintendo sending early copies to a Mexican mom-and-pop store that ended up selling it prematurely.
    • On March 30, 2019, Best Buy's website featured an ad for the Fighter's Pass which included a never-before-seen Joker render. It was removed later the next day, which blatantly confirmed it was his official render placed in the ad by mistake.
    • On April 9, 2019, a TV ad for the game briefly showed Stage Builder on a menu screen in the background, a mode which had since been missing from launch.
    • On September 1st, 2019, it was discovered that certain branches of Nintendo listed a DLC page for the fourth DLC fighter that carried a copyright notice for SNK. It was taken down within a day, and a Nintendo Direct on the 4th revealed that said fighter was Terry Bogard.
    • A 4chan user, allegedly an employee of the Disney Music Group, made a post in late July 2021 making some fairly bold statements; they alleged that Nintendo had contacted them for the license to several songs from the Kingdom Hearts series for use in a digital event on October 5th, and that its hero Sora was the final DLC newcomer for Ultimate. It went unnoticed at the time, but picked up traction once a Nintendo Direct on September 23rd, 2021 confirmed that the date of the final Ultimate presentation was indeed October 5th. And, sure thing...
• Team Fortress 2's Meet the Spy video was accidentally leaked a day early due to a bug on YouTube that allowed iPhones to view videos marked as Private. Amusingly, this was referenced in the officially released version of the video, changing one of the panels on the alert board from "Lost Memory" to "Leaked Video".
• The Xbox Series X console was long rumored to have a cheaper, less-powerful counterpart called the Xbox Series S. The console variant's existence was then leaked via the packaging of the Xbox Series X controller. Then someone outright leaked an announcement trailer for the console early September 2020, forcing Microsoft to confirm it and the launch details of both Series S and Series X one week earlier than intended.
• Bizarrely, Sega leaked the full version of Yakuza 6 themselves, by mistake. They released a demo a few weeks prior to its April 2018 release that was just the full game, but set to only allow the player to play so far (the idea being that they could keep their progress and pick up where they left off after buying the full game). However, an exploit in the US PS4 release allowed players to continue past this point.
• Official localizations for The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails, The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, Trails to Azure, and Trails into Reverie were accidentally confirmed ahead of the official announcement by the Epic Games Store pages going live too early. About the only thing they didn't leak was that Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure would be based on the Geofront translations, and some put two and two together anyway because Trails to Azure's official logo is almost identical to that of the Geofront version.
• World of Warcraft: The title and some details of the ninth Expansion Pack, Dragonflight, were leaked several weeks ahead of the April 19, 2022 announcement.
• Your Boyfriend: Despite the creator's explicit warnings not to post footage of the other days from the Patreon beyond Day 1 until the full game releases, some people didn't listen and uploaded the gameplay to YouTube anyway; this resulted in said videos getting taken down by copyright claims.

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