I wanted to argue just break the NDA and leak the art. (Anonymously, say your Dropbox was hacked, unlikely action will be taken against you.)
I wanted to argue that art leaks are great for the community, even if they harm the company. But I remember reading how the HL2 beta leak tanked morale at VALVE, and arguably if the team's morale is hurt, that ultimately hurts the community too.
Still at some point the culture there shifted and people who had been working on Episode 3 released their art, storyline etc (though some later regretted it).
To some degree, having the work discussed is great. But depending on the way it leaked, it can diminish the focus on the product, and sometimes it can make the official release flop and that's not great.
From what I hear, Google has/had a policy/culture of largely free information flow inside the company while not having information flow outside the company; a leak undermines that culture/policy and leads to more locked down information flow on the inside, and it's reasonable to be upset about that.
> they became hostile to me for the rest of the lunch for even having suggested that their feeling might not be justified.
People don't usually apprechiate it when they're upset and others tell them their feelings aren't justified and they should feel differently. That's simply not a good way to engage people.
Did you read the article, though? The argument thing was on the Minecraft room; the leaks were reportedly more of a long-term thing with intel shared out of a sense of “community” and “edification” on a smaller group.
Oh, sure; I think the parent commenter's point was in thinking that emailing everyone about the termination of the leaker served as any sort of deterrence mechanism for people's use of the leaked build.
The first kind is leaks for glory, profit, etc, ie: we're about to release this hot new product and I'm sneakily letting TechNews.whatever know about it ahead of time. Maybe you get paid for this leak. Maybe you just do it because you're excited or want to feel important. It's rule-breaking behavior for personal gain, monetary or otherwise.
The second kind is the moral, ethical leak. Whistle-blowing. My company/government is doing something that I find horrendous, that violates my ethics, that I think is or should be illegal, and I want the world to know about it. I also don't want to lose my job because despite not liking what my organization is doing, I also like my life as it is. This is rule-breaking behavior not for personal gain, but for a sense of morality.
We should not let ourselves believe these are the same thing. The first is a selfish act, while the second is (to some extent) a selfless one. Those who yell "F--- you leakers" are trying to convince you its the same thing and use the negative emotions directed at the first to convince people not to do the second.
I'd like to suggest that planned leaks that look like this (ie, an employee making a mistake and announcing/confirming a future product) mostly don't make sense for companies of a certain size/maturity/growth/dominance/culture.
Companies want to be able to shape the message people receive about their products, to highlight good or important points and allay certain fears. Leaks are often bad for that, since it inherently relies on third parties to speculate. Whether it's TechCrunch, New York Times, or Robert Scoble, at least one of them will interpret the information in a way that is detrimental to your interests.
If you have a planned leak and you don't tell your employees that you planned it, and you don't take corrective action against the "leaker", you're sending a message that it is okay to be lax about this stuff because there are no consequences. And then you start getting unplanned leaks, which are way worse, since it wouldn't be anything near a carefully crafted perfectly unambiguous planned leak.
If you have a planned leak and you DO tell your employees, then you're going to create a cynical bunch of people, which will hurt productivity and creativity. And they'll tell people about the planned leaks, and you'll lose a lot of credibility (which hurts hiring as well). And they'll start leaving, which is a really heavy cost.
If you have a planned leak and you don't tell your employees (or, even worse, deny it) and you're found out to have done so, you're in an even worse situation.
Sure, they SAID that they were annoyed because of potential security issues. But you know what really annoys companies? Their secret sauce being easily viewable to competitors, and the extra workload their legal department will have tracking down people who host the leak and sending them DMCAs.
At the risk of repeating a tired Internet cliche, I think the leak may have helped Half-Life 2.
If the project was already months behind schedule and had a year before a GM build would be ready, having the source code leaked may have given hardcore gamers reassurance that the game was actually coming along and would be finished at some point.
Of course, there's also the newsworthiness and buzz coming from the leak itself.
I wanted to argue that art leaks are great for the community, even if they harm the company. But I remember reading how the HL2 beta leak tanked morale at VALVE, and arguably if the team's morale is hurt, that ultimately hurts the community too.
Still at some point the culture there shifted and people who had been working on Episode 3 released their art, storyline etc (though some later regretted it).
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