This might be my most stupid question yet, but what the hell:
I’m reading about the GTA VI leaks on Wikipedia, and it talks about the various impacts the leaks had, one of which was low morale amongst the developers. Why is that? The response from the internet to the GTA VI leaks in particular seemed to be positive and caused renewed excitement in the game. Everyone [seemingly] understood that it was early, non-final work, but were nevertheless impressed/excited, as far as I could tell anyway 🤷 Besides, it’s GTA, it’s not like they’re gonna break much new ground in terms of gameplay mechanics that need to be kept secret. Things were more or less set in stone in that regard in GTA III.
Why so sad?
My assumption has always been that this is just the usual made-up corporate nonsense that comes from management and marketing departments, to try to turn public opinion against leakers.
My guess is that most of the humans actually creating the game don’t have strong opinions. Marketing teams probably care because it disrupts their plans. Management of course cares because it could impact sales. And with big dev teams with dozens or hundreds of people working on a game there will never be a consensus opinion. Maybe some would be upset that people get to see placeholder work or rough drafts, but only a fool would look at a leaked game and judge the individuals who made it based on that. Heck, even when games are officially released in functionally unfinished states I think most fans these days know to blame management and ownership rather than the workers.
I don’t remember ever seeing an actual dev talking about leaks much. Even content creators that are former devs. Absense of evidence is not evidence of a sense of course, but like… If I apply that to my own work I don’t think I would really care.