Marvel's Wolverine grosses $100M+ as Spider-Man pipeline absorbs review and leak fallout
Summary
Marvel's Wolverine grossed over $100 million and became the sixth-best-selling PS5 game of 2026.
Sales reportedly exceeded the lifetime PS5 sales of Death Stranding 2.
The game scored 78 on Metacritic, Insomniac's lowest first-party PS5 rating.
A 2023 ransomware breach leaked 1.67TB of plot, level design and gameplay footage three years pre-launch.
Insomniac built the game on the Spider-Man 2 pipeline, which used machine-learning to speed production.
"There are no AI-generated assets in Marvel's Wolverine"
01
Revenue cleared $100M despite the lowest first-party scores
Marvel's Wolverine ranks as the sixth-best-selling PS5 game of 2026, past $100 million.
Sales reportedly surpassed the lifetime PS5 total of Death Stranding 2.
Metacritic landed at 78 and OpenCritic at 79, below every prior mainline Insomniac PS5 release.
Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart each hold 88; Miles Morales holds 85.
Individual scores split from GameSpot's 8/10 to Giant Bomb's 2.5/5, showing no critical consensus.
02
Marvel IP and a reused pipeline offset the first-party risk
Insomniac shipped the game as a first-party PS5 exclusive, carrying full development cost with no publishing partner.
The technical pipeline carried over from Spider-Man 2, which used machine-learning to cut production time.
The 2023 ransomware breach exposed gameplay footage, level design and plot three years before launch.
The leak did not suppress day-one demand once the game reached retail.
03
Insomniac killed an AI-asset accusation within days
A distorted in-game bathroom sign went viral, with one tweet passing 315,000 views alleging generative AI use.
James Stevenson attributed the sign to a UV map bug with a fix in development.
"There are no AI-generated assets in Marvel's Wolverine"
Insomniac's denial kept its sanctioned machine-learning use separate from the generative-AI backlash.
What this means
For Publishers & Developers: Strong IP plus a reused engine can absorb a leak and mixed reviews without denting revenue.
For Investors & VC: Wolverine broke Insomniac's 85-plus streak yet cleared $100M, showing critical risk decoupled from commercial ROI.
For Service Vendors: Insomniac draws a hard line between machine-learning tooling and generative AI assets when scoping AI work.
Events
Companies
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Locations
North America
SYNTHESIZED FROM:
- Marvel's Wolverine | Critical consensus | GamesIndustry.biz
- Marvel's Wolverine Scores Are Mixed, Below Insomniac's Previous Games
- Wolverine Dev Denies Using GenAI After Weird-Looking In-Game Sign Discovered
- Insomniac Confirms Wolverine Doesn't Contain AI-Generated Assets After A Weird-Looking Sign Goes Viral
COMPILED BY GAMES ATLAS EDITORIAL
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