Seems The Last of Us Part II fell victim to hackers, not angry employees

Recent The Last of Us Part II leaks had people speculating that a Naughty Dog employee, disgruntled over crunch culture stress, leaked the pivotal cut scenes for vengeance reasons. Turns out, it was probably just hackers exploiting a security vulnerability found in other Naughty Dog games.

The leaks included major story spoilers for The Last of Us Part II that made unwitting viewers, and the game’s developers, very angry. You won’t find any of those spoilers here.

Basically, it seems there was a way for hackers to use data, hidden in the code for games like Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us, to access the Amazon servers used by Naughty Dog – oops. Those servers contained data related to The Last of Us Part II, which the hackers grabbed, allowing someone to share it with the world.

For a more detailed explanation of how hackers were able to get a hold of so much TLOU2 data, feel free to peruse PixelButts’ eloquent Twitter thread on the subject.

In a statement to Polygon, Sony confirmed that they had discovered the identities of the hackers and that they were not affiliated (currently or previously) with Naughty Dog or Sony Interactive Entertainment.

SIE has identified the primary individuals responsible for the unauthorized release of TLOU2 assets. They are not affiliated with Naughty Dog or SIE. We are unable to comment further because the information is subject to an on-going investigation.

The vulnerability has since been fixed.

The Last of Us Part II is set to release on 19 June 2020.