PlayStation exclusive ‘Minions: Tropical Island’ was canceled after a developer’s identity was leaked. The dev was a former arms dealer and war criminal who was working under second identity

The developer whose name is Michael Clayton pursued animation at the university of Houston before joining the war in Iraq. His father was also an arms dealer and FBI informant but died in 2003 of heart complications.

The leak itself came from the most recent Sony data breach known as “The Insomniac” hacks, Insomniac are the developers behind many notable Sony titles. Although Insomniac are not the developers of Minions: Tropical Island, a broad range of developers’ data was breached including phone numbers and emails.

And email with the subject matter “We need to talk about Clay” was sent by a now redacted informer, most likely an employee working on the game Minions: Tropical Island. In the email, they discussed how Michael was “oddly” into firearms and during development brainstorming sessions would always bring up the possibility of adding guns to the game. “The closest thing to a gun was a freeze dart but Clay kept animating really sophisticated designs, replicas of real life guns.”

Clayton who took over his father’s business possibly maintained ties with the FBI which possibly lead to a new partnership with the CIA. No further information regarding his crimes were revealed except several documents alluding to his arms deals on Wikileaks.

Following a rush of online posts to the subreddit r/Gamingleaksandrumors, a user had posted information that linked Michael Clayton to his past as an arms dealer. “I randomly looked through the leaks (insomniac) and I found a guy who I vaguely remembered seeing once… after further investigation, my discord server had linked him to being a fed and a war criminal.”

After the post had gained momentum it was removed by Reddit admins under the pretense of “maintaining the privacy of staff.” A month a lead developer posted to twitter that the game Minions: Tropical Island had been cancelled, but no other reason was given.