It appears Microsoft’s upcoming big-hitting title Halo: Reach has been the subject of a security breach thanks to industrious hackers circumventing the company’s presumed less than stringent network security restrictions.
Though not released until September 14th, Microsoft decided to seed the full game on Xbox Live enabling reviewers to grab an early copy and put some pre-release leg-work in. Putting a sky-high MS point amount of 99,999 (roughly £1,000 / €1,250) on the title, hackers from mod-site GameTuts somehow managed to crack the code and snag themselves a download.
Posts over on the site’s forum have since been removed, though some have been reiterated on NeoGAF. The lost comments (disjointedly) stated:
“”The GameTuts staff have all participated in the work of “Halo: Reach”. The main members of our team, Matty and Cthulhu have worked endless hours, pushing the barriers to allow our golden faces play ‘Halo: Reach.’ The intelligent mind of our beloved Admin, Matty, worked endlessly to acquire this game, the deed was done. The moderator of GameTuts, Cthulhu is now the man of his word to work on the game file and allow our members see ‘Halo: Reach’ before its release.”
This is what the download (apparently) looked like.
Based on similar such exploits in the past, expect consoles found to have played Halo: Reach before its official street date to be perma-banned by Microsoft.
Wow, today really has been a day of covert shenanigans.
Source: NeoGAF
PoorPaddy89
Why is there a blue stripe next to the article link rather than a green one? I got relly excited as a PS3 owner for about 3 seconds, then quickly resumed and air of fanboyic nonchalence.
Kovacs
Glitch in the matrix. There is no spoon.
PoorPaddy89
I met that kid. I had a dance off with him and won. True story :)
hazelam
what’s the betting that there’s somebody out there with more money than sense that tried to buy it, just to get the game early, even at that price?
amiga_dude
Well if there are in UK they have broken these 2 laws:-
Computer Misuse Act
Fraud Act
They could be looking at lot of hard time.
wick15
That seems like a fair price to me *cough*.
Person678
How can a game have 86083 ratings before it’s released? *sigh*.
ghost5
Good point about the ratings but if you look at how many points it costs it’s actually ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine – 99999 – not 9999!
ghost5
Forget about that. I’m being thick
BetaGhast
*SPOILERS*
SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE
Danza Di Fuoco E Ghiaccio
NOOO!!
BIGAL-1992
*SPOILERS*
The actual ending was shit. I’ve seen it.
seedaripper1973
Aww i didnt think it was too bad…generic as hell mind!
Charmed_Fanatic
wooooo buying ;)
gazzagb
Why would they put it up publically on Live?! It doesn’t make sense. And is that 7gb for the WHOLE game?