Astrolabe Digest: 060324

Hey, hi! Welcome to Astrolabe Digest. This is a new column for paid supporters1 aimed at keeping y’all informed about the best stories in Astrolabe’s orbit. Think of it like a levelled-up version of Quest Markers.

Astrolabe Digest isn’t here to replace main Astrolabe issues (I’ve got a couple cooking and they are doozies!), but to supplement them by bringing you more goodness while the big stories bake.

With freelance games journalism becoming more and more untenable, I’m looking at diverting my time and energy toward providing more value for paid Astrolabe supporters, as a way to keep doing what I’m doing. So, if you appreciate my work here or elsewhere, consider a paid subscription.

Those Nintendo leaks? Blame Google

• A recent database leak at Google, obtained by 404 Media, has shed some light on the method used by the online video game community to leak news about upcoming releases weeks or months ahead of their official announcements.
• "Individually the incidents, most of which have not been previously publicly reported, may only each impact a relatively small number of people, or were fixed quickly," explained 404 Media's Joseph Cox. "Taken as a whole, though, the internal database shows how one of the most powerful and important companies in the world manages, and often mismanages, a staggering amount of personal, sensitive data on people's lives."
• The database revealed that in 2017, a Google employee leaked the existence of a new Yoshi game after accessing the content on YouTube. Thanks to internal notes in the leaked database, 404 Media revealed that Google knew of the breach: "'Google employee deliberately leaked private Nintendo information,' the entry in the database reads."
• Confirmation of video game leaks originating within Google verifies a long-standing theory that many major gaming leaks were not internal at places like Nintendo, but rather originated with Google employees abusing admin privileges on sites like YouTube where companies like Nintendo upload press materials and trailers early.

• Prominent Nintendo leaker Pyoro has obliquely denied a connection to the YouTube-related leaks:

• Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson reported on the nature of game leaks:

Sony’s recent State of Play was a big eye-opener for me and the most recent example I can give about how widespread this new YouTube leak culture is. Within around 18 hours of the State of Play being scheduled on YouTube, I had four different individuals send me the complete game list. Some game names were slightly different from others, likely because of different regions and the rush to jot everything down to be the first, but they were all generally spot on. One such individual even told me that the information was sold to an undisclosed person for a small three-figure amount, who then told him to spread it to more people for validity.