Leakers are no strangers to online communities, but in the online video game community, there has been a thriving community that has grown in the past few years. For many online creators and reporters, leakers have been a major help in speculation and other information gathering for the community, despite their dubious legality.
That said, there has been a growing discontent among them across the community, for killing the excitement within the community.
Video game events in the past would have largely surprised the community with their game announcements, as leaks were often exposed on fringe websites and forums, away from the mainstream internet. In recent years, leakers have more presence in commonplace social media sites like Twitter, Reddit and more.
The global reach of these websites has led to information released by leakers to spread to the mainstream much more easily. Due to the near normalcy of leaked information, fans of video games have noticeably tuned out of most modern video game events, as to already privy to announcements before they are released.
Many video game fans have noted that they would have been more excited for upcoming video game announcements if leakers didn’t release tentative information more publicly. On the game development side, leakers have the unfortunate side effect of reducing player retention, ruining any marketing planned by the developers or giving players a disjointed perception of upcoming game content.
