You know the situation is bad when Sony would rather say they were hacked AGAIN (this is, what..the 3rd time now) rather than admit that they have no control over Naughty Dog. Because really, unless Sony wants to claim that someone literally broke into Naughty Dog's offices & stole a dev kit (which SOMEONE would have noticed), that's the only other way this could have gotten out.
Not defending Sony here, but I'm not sure if a hack or theft is the most obvious conclusion to draw here? Various builds of games pass through many (internal & external) offices before ever reaching market. Warner Bros. managed to hold a focus group and somehow still have someone leak video from their upcoming Harry Potter game. Information is difficult to control (luckily so, imo).
[EDIT: Spoke to soon perhaps? Schreier reports a hack may have been the case after all.]
I agree someone within Sony (a massive corporation) or Naughty Dog would be obvious candidates, especially if speculation about a disgruntled employee is correct. Naughty Dog has repeatedly relied on crunch development (not just on
Last of Us 2, but also on
Uncharted). That's bound to burn people out, especially if no compensation is offered.
This is the same company which
allegedly tried to covered up internal sexual abuse by having Sony HR step in and offer the victim $20,000 of shush money. The following is speculative, but if HR is clearly not on the side of the employees, what avenue do employees have to resolve conflicts?
Honestly, we're doing Sony a favour by turning this into a witch hunt for the suspected leaker. That distracts from what seems to be the underlying problem, a terrible work culture. For the workers, you can bet this leak will result in a long internal investigation. That could exacerbate internal distrust, and purposefully isolates people a bit from each other. Sony/ND can spin this in such a way that the search for the leaker becomes their lightning rod for a while, and wave that as an excuse to not treat their employees better.
Fans may even take corporate's side on this because they don't want their precious game spoiled.