Last month, a data leak concerning the GeForce NOW caused a major stir, as it listed a number of Sony exclusives, including as of yet unannounced titles like Bioshock 2022, indicating that these games would also be coming to PC. GeForce NOW is the cloud-based gaming service from Nividia, which has acknowledged the leaked list of games. Nvidia claims the list does not indicate future releases, but rather is used internally for tracking and testing.

The games listed as part of this leak caused such a major stir because they included enormously popular franchises like God of War, Grand Theft Auto, and Final Fantasy. Further evidence of the list's validity is that Sony announced that it would be preparing more games for PC in July last year. Regardless of the validity of the list, or whether these games will ever be released, the massive leak is an apparent indictment of Nvidia's cyber security and general protocol. While Nvidia has announced that no personal information was accessed, this data breach does come after a leak of personnel data in December 2014 and major bugs and data leaks in October 2020.

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Nvidia and Data Leaks

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As mentioned, this is not Nvidia's first data leak, and it reveals an ongoing complacency for data leaks more broadly. While the leak has mostly evoked excitement amongst gaming fans, the news comes amidst ongoing chip shortages that persist despite a resurge in supply this summer. Gaming fans then may consider it beneficial that the games leaked, though the chip shortages that Nvidia is also involved in are causing a level of distress; as such, Nvidia's reliability in terms of data management and protection is in doubt.

Nvidia was also careful to mention that in addition to no personal information being leaked, nor were any game builds. Aside from Nvidia's relationship with consumers, the leak will likely have an impact on Nvidia's business relationships. In particular, this leak concerns Sony, who was likely keeping this information under wraps if the list is true to their upcoming projects. However, Sony has suffered its own data breaches in the past, which again further emphasizes a larger trend of data breaches becoming commonplace. It appears as though there is a real failure of cyber security in keeping up with data leaks, which has much more serious ramifications in relation to private data. There has also been a noticeable uptick in theories of data leaks being calculated moves by certain companies to create more buzz.

Implications of the Leaked List of Games

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While Nvidia disavows the list as an indication of upcoming projects, Ubisoft has since issued a takedown notice. This means that at least some of the Ubisoft titles included in the list are genuine upcoming projects from the developer. While many of the games are listed using codenames, these codenames have already been decoded and had their validity assessed. However, as Nvidia emphasized this list was using for testing, which may mean that some of these titles have been since canceled or never actually make it to development. The list gives no real-time insight into any projects in development, and as such any of the information is tenuous. While this indicates a more minor data breach for Nvidia, Ubisoft's takedown is damning evidence.

Ultimately, only time will tell the validity of the list. However, there are plenty of educated guesses about which titles might be actual upcoming projects, and which are unlikely. As such, gaming fans can adjust their expectations accordingly. The list also has some old titles, and publically announced titles, so there's plenty of reason to take it with a grain of salt. Still, the reactions to some titles mentioned in the Nvidia leak could potentially influence developers' future decisions.

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