Cancelled Spider-Man game trailer surfaces
December, Insomniac Games was hit by a ransomware attack, which led to a massive data breach that leaked 1.7 terabytes of data and over one million files onto the internet. The leak contained early footage of Insomniac’s indevelopment Wolverine game, the studio’s roadmap for the next decade, other sensitive information about games the studio was working on and private employee information of the PlayStation-owned developer of the Marvel’s Spider-Man games.
On March 13, a new trailer surfaced as part of that data breach, for a game by Insomniac called Spider-Man: The Great Web, previously reported to have been cancelled. The trailer showed that The
Great Web would have been a spin-off from the existing Marvel’s Spider-Man games. An online game, the trailer revealed that players would control different versions of Spider-Man in New York and other universes. TheGreatWeb’s leaked trailer has Yuri Lowenthal voicing Peter Parker calling for players to join forces to fight the supervillain group Sinister Six. The footage also includes combat and exploration identical to the Marvel’s Spider-Man games.
PlayStation and Insomniac never revealed why The Great Web was cancelled, but it was speculated that the game was possibly being developed as a live-service, always online game, with the various Spider-Man characters and cosmetics being locked being real life money transactions. If so, PlayStation may have pulled the plug on the game due to the prevalent, negative sentiment by the gaming community over these types of games. It was the same sentiment that sunk other games with a similar design and philosophy, such as 2020’s Marvel’s Avengers and the recent Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Though The Great Web is out of the picture, Insomniac is still developing the Wolverine game and according to data leak, a yet to be announced X-Men game. - By Mark Mathen Victor