10 Video Games That Went Extreme To Protect Spoilers
3. Claiming Some Of The Leaked Spoilers Are Fake - The Last Of Us Part II
It's a game developer's worst nightmare when extremely sensitive, even compromising plot information leaks out ahead of time, as happened with The Last of Us Part II.
Roughly two months before the game eventually came out, extensive cutscene videos were leaked online, spoiling most of the major plot turns and causing epic spoilers to spread across social media like wildfire.
Writer-director Neil Druckmann said he was "heartbroken" by the leak, though soon enough turned to go on the defensive, suggesting to fans that many of the prominently-spread leaks were in fact incorrect. Druckmann said:
"There's so many false things out there... We don't want to go out there and correct anything because that would be spoiling the game in a way - by saying what it isn't, we're kind of saying what it is."
Ultimately this was more an act of damage control than anything - the widely-disseminated leaks were in no way false, and though Druckmann rightly asserted that they were lacking full context, they did nevertheless give an accurate impression of the game's major narrative beats.
You can't blame Druckmann for wanting to calm anxious fans trying desperately to avoid being spoiled prior to release, but if you accidentally stumbled across a spoiler in the two months before the game came out, it was probably legit.