Halo: Reach Swiped From Microsoft, Leaked to BitTorrent

Halo: Reach, this year's biggest Xbox 360 game, has been obtained by hackers and released into the wild, weeks before its official release date.

BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay currently feature torrents of the game, with hundreds of seeders and leechers downloading away. The Halo: Reach dump requires an Xbox 360 modification called JTAG, which lets users load games through a PC parallel port.

A member of console-modding website GameTuts said late last week that the group had obtained Halo: Reach. "So after a lot of .xex cracking etc.. Me and my team finally did it, we got Halo: Reach!" read the post. "This is not released for public, and we are not really planning on releasing either."

According to reports, the modders got it from Microsoft, which had uploaded a build of the game to Xbox Live Marketplace but kept it behind what turned out to be a porous security fence. It's not clear who exactly leaked the stolen game.

"We are still investigating details surrounding a claimed leak of Halo: Reach and have nothing further to share," Microsoft said in a statement Monday.

A Microsoft representative told Game|Life that the company had been exploring different ways to get the game to reviewers. (Wired.com will attend a Halo: Reach early-review event in San Francisco starting Tuesday.)

Halo: Reach is the final chapter in the popular first-person shooter series to be developed by Bungie, the game's creator. Microsoft will release the game for Xbox 360 on Sept. 14.

Since the leak, convincing YouTube videos purporting to show key moments in the highly anticipated game have popped up, like this one featuring the final-cut scenes.

PC World points out that Microsoft can't seem to release a Halo game without it leaking:

Halo has a storied history of early leaks. Halo 2 was stolen (in 2004) roughly a month before the game was due out, Halo 3 hit file-sharing sites days before the game went on sale in September 2007, and Halo 3: ODST was "accidentally" sold weeks before its official sale date last year.

Will this leak cost Microsoft sales? I don't see how it could make a dent, considering that you need to solder a parallel port into your 360 before you can use it. Anyone dedicated enough to do that was probably going to pirate the game anyway.

Image originally uploaded by user Joakim at GameTuts (Google cache)

See Also:

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• New Halo: Reach Xbox to Sport 360 Design, Custom Sound
• 5 Things Bungie Should Fix in Halo: Reach