Sometimes, game studios have strict security. Other times, they let random people sneak into their buildings, steal lunch and find out about unannounced games.
Take, for example, Digital Extremes, the Canada-based company behind Warframe (pictured above). Yesterday, on Reddit, a poster named UndercoverLegend wrote that he snuck into Digital Extremes’ office, took lunch, and started talking to other employees there, who revealed that the studio is working on a card game called Keystone.
Reddit’s mods have since deleted the story — which I’ve independently confirmed is true — but we’ve got it here:
A bit of a back-story: I have been following DE for years now, I knew they were in London, Ontario, Canada but I didnt know where. They have been hiding from us for years, no explanation to as where. I found them. On the corner of [REDACTED] is their office in [REDACTED]. How did I find it? Well if you go high enough there is a Tenno statue! You can clearly see it and where they used to do dev streams from the window. The doors are all opened by fingerprints, pretty cool haha. But I just followed some tattooed dude into the door after he unlocked it. He didnt even ask me any questions. I had my Doctor Who shirt on and I tried my best to blend in.
No one asked me if I worked there, I just sat in the chairs and moved around every now and then. at 12:01pm the lunch lady says that food is ready over the overcom and I join up the line. Theres a bunch of plates stacked and then you just grab the food buffet style. I sat down and enjoyed my free lunch and started talking to some people. They told me they were working on a new game called Keystone. They said it was a FPS with cards (like magic the gathering style perhaps) but didnt explain that much about it. The QA room has funko figures and stuffed animals everywhere. There were also a lot of ps4 and xbox one sitting around unattended. There were no security guards and no one asked me who I was. They just assumed I belonged there and told me about their secret game. at 6pm people started leaving so I just followed them out and the one guy said “See you tomorrow” so I agreed.
TL;DR: DE has shitty security and delicious food. Also Keystone.
So, uh. That happened.
UPDATE: Writes Digital Extremes community manager Rebecca Ford on the Warframe forums:
A recent claim from a fan circulating the web alleges he or she spent the day with us incognito. Well, Canadians are known for being welcoming and polite!
We employ over two hundred passionate gamers committed to delivering kickass games like Warframe and Sword Coast Legends and while we’re flattered someone would want to spend the day with all of us, please respect our privacy and know that, like any business would, we completely discourage any and all unlawful attempts to enter our Relay.
We love our Tenno, but let’s be respectful and law-abiding. Trespassing is never OK.
Comments
25 responses to “Guy Sneaks Into Game Studio, Finds Unannounced Game”
If was this guy, I would have kept on going in every day, giving advice, asking people how they were going with their work, until eventually they just put me on the pay-roll and gave me an official title.
He could work on the Penske file…
This just in, vision of him getting fired.
I don’t think he’s Penske material
heh … never has a truer word been spoken 🙂
One day, I’m gonna have to find a way to sneak into Valve studios and then Bam!!!!!! HλLF-LIFE 3 confirmed :p
Or you could just start a rumour that you did sneak into Valve and that they are working on HL3. See how far it goes. Just change your name to Und3rcov3rDud3. (Using ‘3’ instead of ‘e’ will make it much more believable) 🙂
So… yesterday I snuck into the Valve HQ and I can confirm that Half Life 3 is not confirmed.
..You nearly had me there 😉
Pretty sure that happened with Left 4 Dead 3. Someone toured the studio and caught a reference to a L4D3 file on a computer screen.
Just a confirmation that they still actually work on games would be good
While it’s cool (but slightly illegal) that he did this, it is unfair on the studio to spill the beans on an unannounced game. Many games are worked on and then pulled or changed during development so leave the announcing to the studio, but by all means talk about your free lunch
Uh, “slightly” illegal? Try completely illegal – he was trespassing, plain and simple.
Yeah, even this story could have left the info out about the game..
Why only slightly illegal?
In the future, all new games will be announced this way.
Guy breaks law, brags about it on reddit, gets away with it
More news at 6 Jim, following this footage of an adorable puppy.
And sometimes, Freddie Wong murders a bunch of people to announce a not-particularly-eagerly-anticipated sequel to a game that had just come out and that people weren’t really done with playing yet.
Heh, I remember that video, the holosight on his gun was on backwards. :p
The article’s Tags should include “warframe” not “warfare” – no wonder I cannot find any Warframe related stuff on Kotaku!
Yep, and now thanks the antics of one irresponsible person, the hundreds of people working in there will be inconvenienced with increased security regulations.
Actually, this is fantastic marketing for them.
Now if only they would focus on getting warframe finished instead of new IPs.
the disappointing thing for them is that – its a card game – at this point does the world need yet another card game?
…..no
I don’t think that’s poor security, I think that’s spectacular spying haha. You could get into a lot of places if you were that smooth about it, something like that could easily happen even at my own office and my office is much bigger (both literally and in terms of scope) than Warframe’s studio.
Holy Shit! This keystone game has just been announced 2 weeks ago, what the fuck is this shit xD