Hackers Leak Insomniac’s ‘X-Men’ Game After Bitcoin Ransom Demand

One week ago, cyberattackers announced that they’d hacked into Sony game studio Insomniac Games and would leak over a terabyte of confidential data—unless a hefty ransom of 50 Bitcoin ($2 million at the time) was paid within seven days. 

The files went up on auction immediately last week, but only 2% of the leaked trove appears to have been sold, according to a report from CyberDaily. The remaining 98% of Insomniac data has been published, revealing files from the studio’s Spider-Man 2 game, a three-game X-Men contract between Sony and Marvel signed in 2021, and personal employee documents like I-9 forms and passport scans.

In the 2021 contract, Insomniac’s upcoming Wolverine game was slated to launch before September 2025, and the second two games are to be released before December 2029 and December 2033. The Wolverine game is currently expected to release in 2026, however, according to leaked files.

Based on a leaked July 2023 roadmap, the company’s other planned games will be Venom, Spider-Man 3, a new Ratchet & Clank game, and an X-Men game.

The purported leaks have already begun swirling online, with substantial Wolverine leaks showing the upcoming game’s concept art, gameplay footage, animations, roadmap, motion capture footage, and more. According to the leaked Wolverine roadmap, the game’s alpha build will be shipped in late 2025, with a beta release coming in early 2026 before the full launch later that year.

Leaked Wolverine game footage shows a third-person point of view and gives players the ability to use Wolverine’s claws to climb buildings, literally sniff out clues, and see apparitions of events starring X-Men characters like Mystique using the superhero’s heightened senses.

According to the leaks, the Venom game will be set in a timeline between Spider-Man 2 and 3 and offer “carnage-infected NYC boroughs,” an 8-10 hour gameplay experience with 12 missions and three boss fights, and playable Venom and Spidey characters.

Leaks also state that Sony, through Insomniac, has a budget of $120 million for each game and, separately, expects to make $85 million in net profits from Wolverine, $75 million from Spider-Man 2, and $170 million from Spider-Man 3.

Further leaks suggest that Insomniac has some exclusivity on X-Men games until 2035 because a document stated that Marvel can’t use X-Men characters in games or launch X-Men games for PC, console, or streaming until that time. Marvel retains some game rights for X-Men characters in games about the Marvel universe, but Insomniac has the exclusive rights to make standalone X-Men titles for the next 11 years.

Rhysida, the hacker group claiming responsibility for the ransom attack and subsequent leak, told CyberDaily that money was their only motivation and that “developers making games like this would be an easy target.”

The hackers further claimed that it only took them 20-25 minutes to breach Sony’s system to obtain the Insomniac data, according to the report.

Sony has not responded to Decrypt’s requests for comment.

Edited by Andrew Hayward