The latest patch for Mediatonic's incredibly popular racing/platformer/Battle Royale game Fall Guys brought a number of updates and tweaks to the game, and it also contained a little something extra: the entire source code.
SteamDB is a website that tracks changes to Steam's online database, and on May 13th, 2021, it registered that Fall Guys had been updated with a bunch of new changes, as is usual when a new patch drops--and that those changes included a folder titled "BackUpThisFolder_ButDontShipItWithYourGame" - a very descriptive name that at least one unlucky person didn't read before clicking. Twitter user Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw), developer, dataminer, and creator of SteamDB, sent out a tweet about the incident roughly three hours ago as of writing, letting the entire internet know what had occurred.
Choosing to create a game with open source tools is one thing, but having the source code of its game leaked is a very bad thing for Mediatonic. This leak will make it easier for hackers to get into Fall Guys in the future, potentially allowing them to taint the gaming experience of other players, give themselves items and currency they haven't earned, and pull other tricks. Even worse, that source code contains everything that Mediatonic uses to make Fall Guys such a fun and distinct experience across platforms.
Fortunately, Mediatonic has already responded to the tweet and deleted the leaked source code files, but the damage may already have been done. Since the issue was pointed out publicly on Twitter and news sites, odds are good that at least a few unscrupulous gamers downloaded the files before they were removed. Having been downloaded once, there's a chance the source code could be spread further throughout the Fall Guys and hacking communities. What an unpleasant way for an update to such a beloved game to turn out.
This isn't the death knell for the game, but it is definitely a mistake to be remembered. It's one thing for developers to have the source code of a game stolen or to release it intentionally, and something else entirely for the source code to be leaked online by accident. Fans will have to hope that the Fall Guys team manages to find a way through this quagmire. In the meantime, there's always Squad Mode.
Fall Guys is out now for PC and PS4 with Switch and Xbox One versions also in development.
