A new report on old privacy incidents suggests that at least one Nintendo leak came from a Google employee showing off private YouTube videos to a friend.
The leak in question dates back to 2017, when images of a trailer for the then-untitled Yoshi's Crafted World hit Reddit shortly before the game's official reveal. In the comments, the poster of that thread said "My friend work at google and he send this photo to me. It's a video that it's already in Nintendo channel and is going to be in public after the reveal." The image included an 'admin.youtube.com' URL, which certainly suggested that this particular call was coming from inside the house.
Now, 404 Media has published a breakdown of several privacy incidents at Google based on internal reports at the company, including this one. The employee, apparently a former temporary contractor, was able to "download video with admin account, and shared unreleased Nintendo feature with friend," Google's internal report concluded. "GI interview concluded non-intentional. Reactive comm sent."
The community has long suspected that many notable leakers get their information from sources like unpublished YouTube videos, and this report would appear to confirm that - at least in this instance. Judging by the admin URL in the leak screenshot, I'd wager this particular leaker had no intentions of this image being widely spread. But then, you'd also hope that your friends are cautious enough to keep you shielded from Nintendo's ire, too.
Industry analyst Daniel Ahmad says he's "heard this is how a number of game leakers operate today still," but some of those leakers are quick to suggest they've got other sources. Prolific Nintendo leaker Pyoro says they've provided info that couldn't be pulled from YouTube, for example. With the Summer Game Fest schedule for 2024 coming up in hurry, there's certain to be a lot of interest in leakers and where their information is coming from over the next few days.
As for Google, though, 404 Media is reporting on some much more serious privacy breaches than leaked video game announcements. The report notes incidents between 2013 and 2018 where Google Street View transcribed and stored license plate information, where a Google speech service logged an "estimated 1K child speech utterances," and where subsidiary Waze leaked the trips and home addresses of users of its carpool app.
These reports, again, come from Google's internal review process, and the company says in a statement that "every one was reviewed and resolved at that time. In some cases, these employee flags turned out not to be issues at all or were issues that employees found in third party services."
Predicting the games of Summer Game Fest 2024 is a lot easier when it's all leaking.
