The blunt truth of the Shadow of the Colossus leaks.

A bit of an explanation to everyone:

This may be a long pastebin with some complicated details, so I will try my best to be as clear and concise as possible.

I am Aith, the former Admin of Beyond the Forbidden Lands (BTFL); a fanmade Shadow of the Colossus expansion that aimed to replicate some of the game's cut content (a bit of a cross between a beta restoration and a new game entirely). I was also a member of Stage 0; a small group of members within the SotC community who managed to get in contact with a source that had some former affiliations with Team Ico during the development of Shadow of the Colossus.

Stage 0 compromised of some relatively known people like Nomad Colossus, Wisi (a hacker friend of Nomad's and the person who originally enabled the remnant Debug Menu in SotC's Preview Version), SpaceOmega5000 (an old member of the Secret Seekers and one of the people who actually taught Nomad about some hacking in the early days), myself, and some other people who have time invested into the community.

The short of things is that our source did not mind sharing things and maintaining semi-regular communication with us, though on the condition that anything they shared with us would not be made public. After discussing this among ourselves Stage 0 came to accept this condition, with the caveat that anything specific would be decided in the future if things changed. Everyone, including Nomad, agreed to this. Only one member of Stage 0 was in contact with our source, I should clarify - this was not a matter of them joining a private discord server, or anything. All communications with them were private and remote.

The original leader of BTFL, Revolver Ocelot (aka Meowsandstuff), also known as Moe, unfortunately came to learn of this (for the rest of this document I will refer to him as "Ocelot") back when he was still trusted. Ocelot was a regular source of conflict and drama between SotC project managers, and at one point adopted the persona of impersonating a Team Ico developer using a second Discord account for the sole purpose of deceiving his own team members into following his ideas for the game. People who were suspicious of Ocelot was often kicked from his server, and some of them included Stage members. Ocelot would in turn even remove said people form the SotC wiki, as during his tenure he had managed to gain moderator authority on the wiki. No one other than the wiki's owner could remove him. Eventually he admitted to pretending to be the fake Team Ico developer after months of denying, and the community and development team unanimously agreed that he should step down.

Ocelot had also been using the things leaked to him as blackmail, though BTFL never once allowed him to return after he was banned from the server. BTFL learned that Ocelot had created a second discord server using BTFL's name (He called it BTFLC (classic), and when privately asked he refused to change the name. This was when Ocelot was kicked from BTFL for good; as before that point he was simply in the server without any authority or roles. He was touting his new server as the 'original' vision for BTFL prior to his removal from the project. I personally believed he wanted to pressure BTFL into changing our name so he could adopt much of the reputation that BTFL had gotten through people like Max Derrat, who promoted BTFL. Max is someone who I am also in communication with, and after explaining everything to him he made the easy decision to cease all contact with Ocelot himself after seeing Ocelot's toxic behavior . Ocelot would often claim that things were 'being taken out of context' when we provided reasons for his ban, although this is patently untrue.

Somewhat recently someone began to leak things to Ocelot (who is the 'anonymous' 4chan leaker), and suspicion quickly fell on BTFL. As BTFL's admin I had been sharing some select materials with a limited amount of devs on our team to be used as reference materials - while our source did not want the actual materials to be public, they did not mind us using them as references to make recreations. So this was, at least for the time being, the closest we could get to showing people the things in them without just directly releasing everything. I believed this was the best allowance we could get without compromising the trust and identity of our source, as our source did not mind recreations at all.

For many months I searched among BTFL team members to try and find who, if anyone, was sharing things with Ocelot, much to my own mental detriment. By this point I was beginning to break and suffer under the pressure; I was blaming myself for Ocelot getting his hands on these things, and I could not do anything about it. I could not sleep well even with medication I bought, I lost most of my appetite, and after weeks of thinking everything was my fault I cracked under the pressure. So I took a break from things and stepped down both as Admin of BTFL. As of right now I have yet to resume the position, and am unsure if I ever will.

Since returning to BTFL as an ordinary member I have learned who the identity of the one who leaked things to Ocelot is, which in turn led to the decision to exclude myself from Stage 0. I will not say who it is, as while they probably do not deserve my protection I simply do not wish to stir up any more drama. But the simple fact is that they watched me run amok and stress knowing that no one I shared materials with was leaking things to anyone, and they did not do anything. They watched me stress, struggle and chase a leak that did not exist for months, as I all but interrogated many of BTFL's team members repeatedly to try and figure out what was happening. They watched me leave BTFL and still did not admit to what they did. It was only after I logged off for some weeks that they finally admitted to it, although by this point it was far too late to do anything. I still do not wish to speak with them at all.

Ocelot had been given too many things by them, and despite knowing that there was no possible way to 'generalize' the documents and images as to protect our source he chose to leak them anyways. Since then I have been informed that Stage 0's source has ceased communications, and rightly so. More than anything I am regretful for our source's trust being violated, and I am dearly hopeful that their identity and safety can remain out of the public eye. They do not deserve any of this. It is not just about "we could have gotten more stuff" from them, as many people think at face value. Yes it is true that we very likely only learned a fraction of the amount of things that they had, as despite being in contact with them for some time our communications were irregular. I still genuinely hope that they experience no repercussions for this; even if they cut contact. That more than anything is where I feel like a failure.

These last few months have been some of the toughest of my life, and I am still exhausted from everything that has happened. Learning that the one who leaked things to Ocelot was not anybody in BTFL that I trusted with materials is bittersweet, and I would still have given anything to have stopped this all from happening. But I could not have done anything to have stopped it.

The best thing we all can do is move on as a community. I still believe that Stage  made the correct decision to keep the materials to themselves for as long as they did, even if only for the better long term sake of the SotC community. We all knew that going public with what we had would risk the connection we had made with the first genuine source the SotC community had in 15 years, and for only a moment of glory and satisfaction. The short term gratification at seeing all these images and documents may be nice, but I genuinely believe that the SotC community has lost something much greater in exchange.

All I would ask of any of you at this point is not to celebrate Ocelot for leaking these things. This is somebody who knowingly and purposefully leaked these documents knowing it would cost Stage 0 contact with out source, for no real benefit to anyone. This was not something charitable he did out of the goodness of his heart; it was a calculated ploy to sabotage Stage 0 and garner himself as much positive reception as possible. He wanted to be seen as the "good guy" for leaking these things while conveniently ignoring everything it would cost everyone down the road.

For what it is worth Stage also DID release some amounts of information already - myself and other members were highly active on the SotC wiki, and would often add things we had learned as long as they could be backed up by already known information; like the Colossi locations. The maps are just a visual confirmation of what we have already publicly added, essentially. I can also say that none of us got off on the fact that we had these things when no one else did; it was not a matter of pride or ego. We were all passionate fans who made the difficult decision to respect our source's wishes and keep any shared materials private for the time being. Ultimately I can not say if we ever would have shared everything, although I would like to imagine that with our source'e eventual blessing we could have gone public down the road at some hypothetical point. Some of the things they gave would have never seen the light of day, however - although mostly for cautionary reasons, as some of the things they had were unique documents to them alone, and could have been dangerous to their identity.

Yes, there is more than was leaked that we still have. Not everything that Ocelot leaked to 4chan is everything that our source shared with us, although given everything I have no doubts that it will remain in private hands. I am not particularly in a charitable mood given everything that has happened, and I would suspect that Stage 0 is not either. Keeping everything else confidential is the least that we all owe our source given this disastrous violation of their trust, and I am not keen on breaking that.

Finally, it is best not to speak of “could have’s”. Yes Stage 0 could have likely stayed in contact with our source if this leak debacle never happened, although the trade off is that people would have to wait longer before anything at all could be made public. The short term gratification for this leak may seem nice and exciting, although it is a drop in the bucket of what could have been. But more than being angry at “not being able to get more stuff”, this is much worse for our source. People should not naively think that everyone once affiliated with Team Ico were able to keep materials like this. Some of the documents leaked could be rather dangerous if seen by the right people, as they alone would be able to radically narrow down their source just by seeing them. There is no way to “generalize” certain leaked things, as Ocelot claimed he wanted things to be, and he knew this.

I would like to thank the BTFL community for their support on this matter, along with Nomad Colossus for personally assuring me that he held no ill will towards me and that he was fully on my side of this matter. Regardless if I never return to work on BTFL or never return to the Stage 0 group, I am just regretful that things had to happen the way that they did, and I wish I had the chance to speak with Stage 0's source and apologize.

Thank you for your time and understanding.