KostasGR
[14] Master
One of the reasons why I'm hesitant to believe the leaks were intentional is due to how different and seemingly random they've been. Here's a list of the leaks I can remember:
- Knowledge of the game leaked a few weeks before being announced at Game Awards via Vergeben (I won't mention any of the other Vergeben stuff as they've been mostly ambiguous).
- Geralt leaked via a tester posting some very tiny details about him and SC6 (this went under everyone's radar since it was posted on a random forum and didn't seem very believable at the time).
- Taki trailer leaked one day before being announced online.
- Yoshimitsu trailer leaked one day before being announced online.
- Voldo leaked (via Israeli arm of Xbox) a few days before the formal announcement (was supposed to be announced during a comic con show).
- The entire roster leaked by a guy working on the game's localization (though it took a long while before people actually believed the list).
- Namco sent the wrong build to an e-sports event in Melbourne which happened to have the entire roster (except Inferno) unlocked, and thus footage of Cervantes and Raphael showed up.
- Cervantes and Raphael leaked once again before their formal announcement via promotional trading cards Namco sent out to the press.
- Amy and Cassandra leaked via 2B patch due to configuration files referencing them. The next patch would include the 6 weird codenames added to the same configuration files.
- Screenshots of Character Creation Set A leaked via Namco Taiwan's Facebook 5 days before being announced with Amy at Evo Japan.
- "Assassin" and "Alpha Patroklos" leaked due to very obscure references to them in the game's executable.
I should note that in addition to the character leaks via game files, they have periodically been adding some files now and then they're not supposed to. For instance, several patches before Cass was added would have the occasional file for Cass. Haohmaru actually had a file for him added back with the Hilde patch. I think those are all accidental due to it being hard to ensure no unused file is leftover in a patch (I should note that it's extremely rare for any game to not have unused leftover assets in their builds).
I don't really see how any of these leaks are to Namco's benefit. Their marketing plan for SC6 before its release was pretty straightforward: announce 1-2 characters every month. I think Cervantes and Raphael leaking so early was especially damning as that meant they had nothing to announce before release (and release was nearly 2 months away at this point) except for Inferno. And no one was gonna get excited about Inferno.
And then you have some character trailers which leaked mere days before they were supposed to be announced, and if those are intentional then what's the point? Especially since most of those trailer leaks were in such bad quality.
So yeah, my theory is that Namco is simply very sloppy. I can also confirm this when it comes to press assets. I have access to a European Namco press site for my Youtube channel and what's the last SC6 asset they posted there? ... The trailer for Amy. On the other hand, I have access to two Capcom press sites and both of those are updated super quickly whenever they announce something. Back when Namco actually did update that press site with SC6 press assets it was very random how slow or quickly they did it.
Raphael was the last character to be announced (if we ignore the 3-4 times he leaked...) so maybe it was supposed to be a reference to that?
"Assassin and Alpha Patroklos leaked"? You mean Hwang and Setsuka leaked!