The weekend got off to what was likely a very interesting start for Fall Guys studio Mediatonic, which apparently—somehow—managed to leak the game's source code in an accidental Steam update.
The whole thing was deleted very quickly, of course, but not before the big banana-slip was noticed and captured for posterity by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik.
I now genuinely believe someone saw your tweet, yelled "oh shit!" and deleted it as fast as possible https://t.co/M7VNqCz2cjMay 14, 2021
The name of the directory through which everything flowed out into the digital ether—"BackUpThisFolder_ButDontShipItWithYourGame"—makes the whole thing seem even funnier from an outsider's perspective, but it's actually auto-generated by Unity to contain data required to debug games, including PDB files and C++ code generated from scripts. In case the folder name isn't sufficiently clear, the Unity docs also warn the developers "should back up this folder for every build you ship, but don’t redistribute it."
- An FPS studio pulled its game from Steam after it got caught linking to malware disguised as a demo, but the dev insists it was actually the victim of a labyrinthine conspiracy
- A web3 free-to-play survival game found to be a front for installing malware on your PC has finally been removed from Steam
The incident is almost certainly not seen as funny by Mediatonic, though. Fall Guys, like most multiplayer games, has struggled with cheaters, and having access to the source code makes it much easier for cheat makers to develop new, more effective ways of ruining everyone's fun. Hopefully it won't become a problem—Mediatonic moved quickly to take the files offline—but I'm not super confident that the code didn't end up in somebody's hands before it was removed, and this stuff has a way of getting around quickly.
I've reached out to Mediatonic for more information about the leak (in particular, how it happened), and will update if I receive a reply. In the meantime, never forget:
