Pirates Play Forza Horizon 6 Days Before Official Launch
▼ Summary
– Forza Horizon 6 playable copies appeared on piracy sites over a week before its official launch.
– The leak resulted from Microsoft mistakenly uploading roughly 155 GB of unencrypted game files to Steam.
– The unprotected upload was immediately noticed on social media and Reddit.
– The game’s copy protection was broken within hours, enabling easy downloads from piracy sites.
– Reddit’s legal team removed the initial CrackWatch post, but discussions of another crack continued.
A critical error by Microsoft has resulted in fully playable copies of Forza Horizon 6 appearing on piracy websites nearly a week before its scheduled retail release. The leak stemmed from a mistake made while uploading the game’s files to Steam over the weekend.
For years, Steam has allowed users to preload an encrypted version of a game ahead of its launch date. The file remains locked until the publisher releases the decryption key, ensuring the title is ready to play the moment it officially goes live. However, early Sunday morning, Microsoft inadvertently uploaded approximately 155 GB of unencrypted Forza Horizon 6 game data to Steam, a fact quickly tracked and confirmed by the community site SteamDB.
The unprotected upload spread with remarkable speed across social media platforms and Reddit. Just hours after discovery, members of the Reddit community CrackWatch reported that the game’s copy protection had already been circumvented. This enabled straightforward downloads of pirated versions on multiple torrent and file-sharing sites reviewed by Ars. While the original CrackWatch post detailing the initial crack was subsequently taken down by Reddit’s legal team, discussions regarding a separate, additional crack were still active on the forum as of Monday morning.
(Source: Ars Technica)
