It's difficult for most gamers to judge whether or not Leaks in the Video Game industry are for the better or worse, to smile upon them or to frown upon them.  As far as gamers go it is almost a grey area.  Lets take a look at the two parties who are affected the most when information or data is leaked from an up-and-coming video game. 

The first party is the gamers, 9 times out of 10, it is the gamers who are laying under the dining room table, waiting for just a crums to fall to fill their apetite's.  The moment a crum begins it's decent from the top of the table, they will pounce on it before it even reaches the floor and before it even travels down their throats it's posted all over the world via the internet.  This isnt always the case, some game finatics will go to very distant levels to obtain a whisper of un-released information.  Lets take a look at this paragraph from G4TV

'"Breach Source Code Nearly Stolen at PAX East

Yes, this was a near leak, but it was so spectacular that it deserves inclusion. When I was working at Joystiq, a kid got up during the Xbox Live Enforcement Panel to ask if he could get his gamertag unbanned. When Xbox Live's Stephen Toulouse asked him why it was banned, he said because he had pirated a game and played it early. Genius. So, no unbanning for him. Later that same day I saw Boston police officers hustling him out of the building and snapped a blurry pic. I gave the information to Alexander Sliwinski who did some more digging, and it turns out he had hooked up his laptop to a dangling ethernet cord at the Breach booth, and was copying over their source code. "

Heres an example of a gamer/employee simply stumbling across a nugget of gold.  In this case the nugget of gold is a Target Reservation Card for the up-and-coming release of Trey Arch's Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 As you can see the Reservation Card contains the release date which was being kept secret until the 1st May (Yeah I know... its just tomorrow) to be displayed at an NBA match. 

Now on to the second party who are affected, this party is affected the complete opposite to the first party.  The Developers, Producers and investors.  Let's put ourselves in their shoes in a rather simplistic manor for a minute.  In the beginning developers, producers and investors send thousands of emails, hundreds of man-hours and thousands of dollars simply discussing the possible partnership of a video game that hasnt even been completely figured out yet (keeping in mind not always 1 of these three teams are even in the picture yet at this stage).  Once an agreement is met, the investors and in some occassions the producers will fund the development work.  Many months and in some cases years later, a Beta release is carefully spread around for testing and in some cases very carefully teased to the gaming world.  NOW the leaking begins.  This can happen in more ways than one:

- An employee could accidentally leave data laying around
- Hackers can drill their way into the database and steal information
- After carefull release of information and data, not always has the process been 100% filtered

Think of all the money producers and investors have put into the game at this stage, the morals of the development team are at a very special high; thinking everything is going well, that they are making something that will change the history of gaming for many years to come, they have all of the motivation they need... and then it hits .. all of their carefull planning, hard work and countless hours away from their families has been compromised. 

As for my opinion...
I dont beleive leaking should ever happen.  Sometimes its the gamers fault, sometimes its the game development parties that stuff it up.  The way I see it, developers and producers should be giving away little snippets of information and not leaving its fans in the dark for too long, little snippets to keep us all happy, to show us their is progress going on and the release is still being worked on. 

Really excellent article, and I agree. I'm not a fan of leaks. Especially really early in the game's development when I'm not sure whether I can trust the information. I do prefer the game makers releasing the information a little at a time.

However, let's look at Apple for a second. They've had, what, three iPhone prototypes "stolen"? I think Apple does that as a way to get the pictures out there and to get people scouring the web for iPhone photos. I think in some ways, or stirs up more buzz than Apple could create with a simple press release. I'm not sure if game producers are doing this, but it makes me wonder how many "leaks" are legitimate.