Over the weekend, as some of us slept comfortably in our beds, the internet did its usual thing. No, not just complain when someone displays a difference of opinion; The collective found something that we aren’t really meant to know about just yet. Yes, there are more leaks on the HMS Offended than there are on royal mail ships between Southampton and New York. As two Twitter accounts linked to the venerable series of Fable and Perfect Dark have both been uncovered.

As you can see in a tweet below by Tom Warren, senior editor for The Verge, both accounts did feature the phrase “Placeholder” with the protected padlock. Both were followed by one account, the Fable account is still protected at the time of writing and still only has one follower. The other now proclaims itself to not be affiliated with Microsoft, which is suspicious given the accounts’ first follower is Ken Lobb. Ken Lobb is the creative director at Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios as well as working for Nintendo of America at the time of Perfect Dark‘s release, when the game itself was being created on a Nintendo system.

I’m not sure who discovered the @fable and @PerfectDarkGame placeholders, but a Microsoft Xbox employee is following one, and the other is registered to a Microsoft email address 👀 pic.twitter.com/MagqUbPiZf

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) June 27, 2020

Since then, there have been conflicting reports over confusion both within Microsoft/Xbox and whoever runs the accounts. In response to Warren’s first tweet, Aaron Greenberg, general manager for Xbox Games Marketing, stated: “These accounts have been inactive for years, it’s standard practice to secure social handles for our IP.” This is a claim that is sullied by the fact the Fable account was created in March, while the Perfect Dark account was created in June, of this year.

To make things worse for Greenberg’s claim, the Perfect Dark account has since opened the flood gates by removing the account protections aimed to protect accounts of children. Now anyone can follow the account and view the tweets from the account. The plot later thickened when the Perfect Dark account tweeted Warren to state, “I created this account after hearing about the @Fable one… shortly after I received a follow request from Ken Lobb…” Followed up with a second tweet: “I sent him a message saying if you needed the @ I’d be happy to give it up, I am still waiting for a reply.”

If you listen to both accounts, there are conflicting stories from both claims. Greenberg’s use of “These accounts” suggests he knew about them before, all before the Perfect Dark account stated they are working alone and aren’t anything to do with Microsoft. Do I think we should believe either of them? No, IP protection and securing social media handles are one thing, but neither account has been idle for years. Neither does the timing work, as the Perfect Dark account waited just under three hours following Greenberg’s statement and made a conflicting report.

Speaking of timing, Microsoft/Xbox are still set to do their faux-E3 showcase sometime soon. Currently, this substitute blowout showcase for the year by Microsoft/Xbox is set to happen sometime in July, possibly late in the month. Do I foresee us getting a glimpse of both games if they are that far into production? That is also a no, we’ve only been teased the possibility of a new Perfect Dark. While The Initiative still hasn’t announced what the studio is working on, it has been two years since their reveal at E3 2018.

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