Halo Reach appears on file sharing site in its entirety

Final Halo title leaked a month ahead of UK launch date

Reach hits illegal P2P sites

The eagerly awaited finale to Bungie's Halo saga has been marred as the full game appears on a number of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing websites.

Not due for official release in the UK until September 14th Halo: Reach landed in the wild over the weekend after hackers bypassed a block on Xbox.com that was providing the game's code to press and reviews. Initially those responsible for the digital theft of the new Halo game claimed they were “not really planning” to release the game to the public but have since gone against this statement.

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With Reach tipped as one of the hottest game releases of the year, it has been doing the rounds on the illegal download sites with ferocity. One gamer uploading the upcoming Halo title to a P2P site wrote: “Game extracted from the leaked .xcp files then converted from god file to iso. Not sure if it will work on flashed consoles but its an iso so it should..confirmed to work on jtags too.”

Whilst this advanced leak might appeal to a number of Halo fans and hardcore gamers, Microsoft has been quick to remind users that their activity is against the law and that it will be “aggressively investigating” the leak and those involved.

Luke Johnson

Staff Writer on T3 Luke Johnson studied journalism at the Liverpool John Moores University and writes, news, opinion and interviews for the site. Topics of expertise include gaming, phones, photography, tablets and computing. Luke is a huge Apple fan, too, owning multiple Apple products and writing about iPhones and iPads frequently.