The issue of the leak is more than just that there's a leak (though that's bad enough). There's a scribd.com user that's been posting some private conversations, some Shadowrun writer chat transcripts, some of Ancient History's unpublished work (though that, at least, with permission I'd assume), some project specs for upcoming books (the general outline that the line developer posts to the writer pool), some private freelancer brainstorming posts...and, now, apparently, also published work in pdf form.
We've got people already trashing an upcoming product that no one's even started on yet, just because they didn't like the look of the project spec. None of us have even sent in proposals to say what sections we'd like to write, and it's already getting trashed and insulted.
More troubling than just the fact we've got a leak, and that some documents are being seen before they're necessarily finished (or without someone paying them, which hurts the game in the long term)...the problem is the atmosphere this brings.
This filehost account had a document on it that was part of a freelancer brainstorming conversation, for instance, where someone pitched out an idea to see what people thought. The idea got posted to scribd, and it got torn apart pretty harshly by the usual bunch of critics out there. What didn't get posted was feedback from other freelancers about the idea, changes to the idea, whether or not anyone even liked the idea, what book it might go into, or anything else like that. Someone essentially said "Hey, wouldn't _____ be cool?" and it got posted to the 'net to be shredded as though it were a finished product. No one looks at the chunks of chicken bone and skin that ooze out of a blender and expects that unfinished product to look or taste as awesome as their Chicken McNuggets, but for some reason an unfinished brainstorming session (one with only a single post, in fact) can be treated as though it were the next CGL Shadowrun book to hit shelves.
Now, imagine you're a freelancer. After something like that happens, you finish writing a rough draft for a chapter for an upcoming product.
Do you want to post that chapter to the fileshare or the freelancer group that's got a leak, or do you want to email it privately to the Shadowrun line developer?
If you post it to the group in order to let other freelancers read over it, share their thoughts, make sure you're all using the same voice for various Jackpointers, to put extra eyes on it for proofing and basic typos, to let your would-be peers read it to see that you're all on the same metaphorical page, and to share with them the basic look and feel and voice and vibe of your chapter...you're opening yourself up to have this rough draft show up on a free fileshare site, where people can and will read this first draft, post links to it on popular SR forums, and tear apart your rough draft without ever giving it a chance to get published in a book.
If you email it privately to the line developer, it's much more secure...but now there's that much extra work falling onto just the layout/editing folks, because the other ten or twelve freelancers aren't reading each other's work, sharing ideas as openly, and generally coordinating the way they'd like to.
I'm not saying that's what happened to War!, because I don't know. I wasn't involved in that project in any way (I got into the freelancer pool well after its chapters were already assigned, writing was already done, all that good stuff), myself. I wasn't in the group, seeing the conversations, as it was being worked on, so I'm not trying to say that that's what happened to it, or whatever.
But I'm saying that, as we writers are moving forward with future products, that's the atmosphere we're in. In the face of complaints about layout and proofing, communication and coordination between writers, we're being put in a position where trying to help each other proof and edit, communicate and coordinate, is something of a Catch 22. I don't think I'm violating any sort of NDA or anything by saying so, but when the first complaints about War! came in, some of the first posts made to that freelancer group were to go ahead and share drafts for our next project. They're posted now, and I, for one, have made several revisions based on feedback I got from other writers. We're trying to put product quality ahead of product security, and we're just hoping that doesn't turn around and bite us in the ass (and then, naturally, about a day later there was another leak, this time of that project spec I mentioned).
And in the meantime, the leak is one more headache for the line dev to have to deal with, along with trying to, y'know, develop the line.
And the truly maddening part is that that scribd user, who's posting this stuff...they probably think of themselves as a fan of the game, and they might even be a current freelancer, who's violating an NDA to post the stuff they're posting. So while they're throwing these sort of obstacles into the path, they're thinking it's somehow helping the game they no doubt claim to love.
