Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Leak - Activision Vows To Hunt Down Leaker

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In the past two weeks, Activision saw their biggest game of the year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, spoiled by a massive leak of information and images posted by a gaming blog. Since then, employees from Infinity Ward and Activision have come out, and they have downplayed the seriousness of such a leak. But, a leaked internal email shows that the company was much more serious about this internally.

Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling had just gently encouraged his Twitter followers not to read the leaked information and to wait for the game to eventually come out. Likewise, Activision Publishing President Eric Hirshberg gave an interview with gaming blog Joystiq and described the Friday when the information was leaked as a “cool” day as he and his team scrambled to consider all their options and what to do. Hirshberg said he wasn’t happy about the leak, but the general gist from Joystiq piece seemed to be Hirshberg was taking it as it came. And, Activision did respond with their own teaser trailers released after the leak and then the general “world premiere” trailer released during the NBA Western Conference Finals this week.

The email, acquired by gaming website Giant Bomb but not posted in its entirety online, has these stern words from Activision Publishing President Eric Hirshberg:

I wanted to reach out to you today and address the Call of Duty intellectual property leak that occurred last Friday, Of course, Activision takes very seriously any abuse of our intellectual property – the event is under investigation and we’re confident it will be resolved quickly.

The site goes on to explain that, somewhat ironically, the leak happened very soon before they had planned to reveal Modern Warfare 3. Something that Hirshberg had said to Joystiq was reiterated in the internal email: they turned a crisis into an opportunity. They released the four teaser trailers on YouTube which got a combined 4 million views – drastically better than the corresponding videos for Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops after the same amount of time.

I’ve heard it suggested that the leak came from the freelance 3D modeling studios out in China or someplace that Infinity Ward may be using, or, I’ve seen some speculate that the leak came from an Infinity Ward employee who was upset over last summer’s drama between Activision and Infinity Ward. That’s a bit of a fantastical theory, but I have no doubt that the leaker will be caught, in today’s world with forensic IT specialists and such. Remember that Microsoft recently fired two employees for leaking internal builds of Windows 8 and Google is said to fire two people every month for leaking secrets.

Admit it, did you look at the Modern Warfare 3 leaked information? Did you even read the plot summary?

You can check out Giant Bomb’s post on the Hirshberg email by hitting the source link.