Sam van Tilburgh, formerly of Lionhead Studios and now of Gfinity, has revealed the tactics employed to stop Fable leaks being posted back in 2003.

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On a recent BAFTA Games Panel titled "Who Rules Games?", van Tilburgh recounted the time a young hacker got hold of screenshots and other information about Fable that was never meant to be released (the story begins at 34:12 in the video below).The group, called Kibitz, was a small group of hackers, and one of the screenshots "was the hero of Fable stabbing a little kid through the head. It was never meant to be released, for obvious reasons.""They managed to get their hands on more material, unannounced even to this day, unannounced Lionhead projects, and they threatened us, the community team, with releasing them," van Tilburgh continued. "What do you do?"The team grabbed the IP address of the hackers from the game's forums, and managed to quickly find out where they lived. They then were able to get a hold of the 16 year old's high school record, including a poem he had recited in class at the end of year. Apparently, Lionhead's legal team were told about it... after it had taken place."We wrote a public message as Lionhead Studios to the group, Kibitz, and we started the message with the opening lines of the poem he recited in high school, and we included a picture of a landmark that he could see from his house," said Van Tilburgh. "I said 'you've got to stop this now, otherwise I'll pass all this information on to your mum.'""He kept quiet and he was a very kind, polite boy after that." Lionhead Studios closed earlier this year amid rumors Microsoft was unable to sell Fable to any potential buyers.

Matt Porter is a freelance writer based in London. Make sure to visit what he thinks is the best website in the world , but is actually just his Twitter page