Forza Horizon 6 developer Playground Games has issued a warning to players after the game’s PC version leaked over the weekend.
The full game has been acquired, cracked and posted onto various game sites just days ahead of the game’s early access release on May 15th, and more than a week before its official release on May 19th.
While the cause of the leak is currently unknown, the popular theory is that an unencrypted version of the game was mistakenly uploaded to Steam’s backend for pre-loading, which allowed users unrestricted access to the game’s files.
In a post on X, developer Playground Games has now issued a response following the leaks, claiming that the cause of the leak was not a result of any pre-loading issues.
“We are aware of reports that a build of Forza Horizon 6 has been obtained prior to its release and can confirm this is not the result of a pre-load issue,” the post read.
The developer also warned players that anyone caught playing this leaked version of the game will be punished with a Forza franchise ban or even a hardware ban.
“We are taking strict enforcement action against any individuals found accessing this build including franchise-wide and hardware bans. We encourage fans to sit tight for the game’s release on May 19.”
Following Playground Games’ response, Steam tracking site SteamDB also released a statement on X, claiming that the cause of the leak was most likely someone with early access to the game. The statement also pushed back against the idea that the game’s SteamDB tracking page showed proof of an unencrypted build being published.
“Forza Horizon 6 was very likely leaked by someone with early access to the build (reviewer or similar),” the statement read. “At around the same time, the file list appeared on SteamDB because someone (could be someone else) used our token dumper.”
“SteamDB does not display or share keys, nor can it provide downloads.”