Playable copies of Microsoft’s Forza Horizon 6 have appeared on game piracy sites more than a week before the game’s official launch. The apparent cause was a mistake in uploading the game’s files to Steam over the weekend.
Since the early days of Steam, players have been able to preload encrypted versions of supported games well ahead of release. This allows the game to be ready to play once the encryption key is released on launch day. However, early Sunday morning, Microsoft mistakenly uploaded roughly 155 GB of Forza Horizon 6 files to Steam in unencrypted form, as tracked by SteamDB.
That unprotected upload was noticed almost immediately across social media and Reddit. Within hours, Reddit’s CrackWatch community reported that the game’s copy protection had been broken. This enabled easy downloads of pirated versions across multiple piracy sites reviewed by Ars Technica.
The initial CrackWatch post was later removed by Reddit’s Legal Operations team. However, as of Monday morning, details of another crack were being discussed on CrackWatch.
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