Full version of Gears of War leaked? [update 1]
by Kevin Kelly 
{ Sep 30th 2006 at 6:05PM }
Gears of War has been pirated and uploaded to an Xbox 360 binaries group on Usenet. The file clocks in at around 7.2 gigs in 157 parts, and will require someone with patience, bandwidth and no sense of morals to download. Is it real? Nobody knows. While it is hard to imagine this being legit, it definitely represents a problem to the developers. We're surprised the feed didn't get the smackdown immediately, but trying to rollout a significant next-gen title might occupy most of your free time.
If people could just be patient, this game will be in your hot little hands very soon. So stop wasting your time downloading useless binaries, and just stare at a calendar. Or you could go to a preview of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and get hands on with Gears afterwards.
[Thank, Bran]
[Update, took out the link ... we're definitely not encouraging piracy here, folks.]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sub @ Sep 30th 2006 6:50PM
Was it wise to post this? Games get pirated all of the time, it's not news worthy. Besides that, if this is legit, you're basically advertising it increasing the likelihood that someone does download it. =/
martin @ Sep 30th 2006 6:55PM
Which is why Nintendo uses their own formats and region coding.
keener @ Sep 30th 2006 6:57PM
haha seriously. if you believe so strongly in staring at a calendar versus people being able to do what they choose with their internet, it probably wasnt so wise to make a public announcement about this...
robustic @ Sep 30th 2006 7:00PM
I think that would be 64 parts. And every part is 157 megabytes. So in other words, it's around 9 gigabytes?
Might be a fake.
Dom @ Sep 30th 2006 7:07PM
This is not hard to imagine being legit. Same thing happened with Halo 2 a couple years ago when it was leaked a full month early (I think a PAL version in French).
What's with the "stop wasting time with useles binaries" comment? Are you trying to get people to download this and prove you wrong?
Derick @ Sep 30th 2006 7:06PM
you should at least cut the link.
This feels like it will only fuel problems for the game.
sienar @ Sep 30th 2006 7:09PM
I you could just be patient you could wait for it to come out, but you also say someone with patience could download it. Whcih is it? Or why waste your time going to a preview event just to get a couple minuets of hands on time when you could download the full game?
And by the way, the binary is far from useless. By posting this you only inform more people about the piracy you are apparently against, especially when you say exactly where the file is located.
And why are you surprised that it hasn't been taken down yet, it's usenet
BklynKid @ Sep 30th 2006 7:13PM
Even if this is true, most people won't be able to do anything with it anyway. The firmware hack is still a relatively difficult task to perform.
Scott @ Sep 30th 2006 7:11PM
Why is this a Suprise? Same thing happened to Halo 2, Half Life 2, Shit even some of Sun's Source Code. This sounds pretty sweet if I had a Hacked Xbox 360.
Jay @ Sep 30th 2006 7:12PM
Yup. games get pirated very day. why make a fuss over a 3rd person shooter?
So you could either wait until god knows when it's out or download 9gb which wouldn't take *that* long, even on my 512kbps connection and a Mac that never turns off. hmm.
shane @ Oct 1st 2006 8:45PM
Doesnt Work, Burned and its Termanator and some other games, works on pc not on computer.
x silence x @ Oct 1st 2006 3:52AM
Why on earth would someone from that company leak that? A better question would be, why the hell wouldn't they protect there builds better? You would think that the security would be super tight on that game. I have seen better security on much smaller and less important games if this is the truth.
Grim @ Sep 30th 2006 7:25PM
Yeah, as BklynKid said, the hack is much harder than most people think.
arghmatey @ Sep 30th 2006 7:30PM
its fo r3alz, playing it now.
Jigen @ Sep 30th 2006 7:34PM
It is fake, pirate groups are saying so already.
I don't pirate games, especially 360 stuff (because I don't even have a modded 360), but I was curious anyways.
I don't see why ANYONE thought this might be real. There are hundreds of 'fakes' of different things every single day. For anyone to think this game is coming out THIS MUCH before the game is even FINISHED...
Anyways, it's something that Joystiq shouldn't report on anyways. It just helps piracy. But I guess Joystiq isn't the most respectable videogame related blog, now is it?
daver @ Sep 30th 2006 7:38PM
Congrats On reporting this. This is news and the more respect you get for doing this news bite. Those who don't want it do not have to read it. Its a scary thing when you start censoring news !! although a few of the negative commentators might be republicans or more likely microsoft employeesss.
Btw you should put the link back in and report news fairly and not just half assed.
Who's call is it toremove the link ?
Jigen @ Sep 30th 2006 7:41PM
This isn't news. It's fake. Fakes happen all the time. The real thing is piracy and illegal.
If you were to report on every fake on usenet, you'd have 10 posts a day about some far off title being uploaded.
Self censorship is advised if you're thinking about starting piracy talk on a site with investors.
Arachneya @ Sep 30th 2006 7:43PM
I think the game has gone quietly gone gold, and the rip is from one of the disc duplication sites where security is not as tight.
Remember when Halo 2 was gonna launch on 11.09.2004, the game was feature complete by August end and the discs were confirmed as having been in production/duplication by the end of September. I think something similar might be going on here.
sienar @ Sep 30th 2006 7:44PM
to Jigen, those same people said the half life 2 leak was fake.
And a similar thing happened with halo 2. The leak may not come from within epic, it is possible that someone stole a copy, this sort of thing has happened in the past(most notably with star fox 2 being stolen at a trade show)
I'm usre lots of people have acess to this, and some may be willing to leak it. but obviously it would be in a pre gold state.
Jigen @ Sep 30th 2006 7:45PM
God you people really are idiots aren't you.
It's a F-A-K-E. Go to any site that really DOES report on such things...
The guy who uploaded it says it was 'a joke'.
You do realize that ANYONE can pull such a fake right?
daver @ Sep 30th 2006 7:46PM
Yes it is news. It might be fake code but it IS news because its such a major title, a crunch title if you will for Microsoft... and the possibility of it being made available illegally 7 weeks before launch, free, is news.
The link should be in there.
And a blog with Investors ? Who cares. If you are going to start towing the corporate line you may as well give up now.
Jigen @ Sep 30th 2006 7:48PM
WTF.
How is a fake upload of trash data (a PRANK someone pulled on the pirate community) newsworthy?
No part of the data he uploaded had anything to do with Gears of War...
jeez
daver @ Sep 30th 2006 7:51PM
We know that now (possibly or possibly not - never forget the forces at play here could be directly linked to MS or Epic and trying to diffuse a security breach )
and its jesus
not jeeeez
daver @ Sep 30th 2006 7:56PM
The censoring of the link is poor form.
Jigen @ Sep 30th 2006 7:53PM
Not only is it fake, but people have known it was fake since yesterday.
There is no excuse for posting every rumor you hear on the internet. Do some research, and try not to post things that will get the site in trouble (when you're an editor at Joystiq).
The guy didn't even upload the entire 'file'. He just uploaded a few rars (not even fully, mind you), and then stopped before even half way.
Jigen @ Sep 30th 2006 7:55PM
daver, you can check for yourself if you want to. It's easy if you know how to use usenet. I've already seen the upload. But I'll assume that noone here even knows what USENET is...
Jeez is slang for 'Jesus'. But you shouldn't correct anyone, as your first post's spelling makes you look like a 12 year old.
daver @ Sep 30th 2006 7:56PM
Any epic of ms staff in here ???
crusty fingers in every pie.
daver @ Sep 30th 2006 8:03PM
So
correct me if i am wrong here....if i search software piracy gears of war in google and it shows me some links that google is encouraging piracy ?
very very lame.
kilodelta @ Sep 30th 2006 8:51PM
if its real, it'll be funny when the Live team sees those gamertags collecting GOW achievements, six weeks before the game comes out, bans the accounts, and then calls in their lawyers.
Jay @ Sep 30th 2006 8:10PM
Daver - Google is a search engine. No need to be pedantic.
LordMinogue @ Sep 30th 2006 8:55PM
I'm curious
When was the 360 fully hacked? What mods are out? What's being done about them?
Will Gears online suck due to modders?
Anyone got answers?
carlos @ Sep 30th 2006 9:07PM
hey were ca i download this
Lee @ Sep 30th 2006 9:13PM
can you even burn 7.2 GB to a single side of a dvd?
Dave @ Sep 30th 2006 9:15PM
360 hasn't been fully hacked - but the DVD drive has. It's not terribly easy to mod, but it's gotten easier in the last few months. The only purpose for this mod is piracy, as it only allows you to play singed content from burned media.
Waccoon @ Sep 30th 2006 9:34PM
I don't get why people waste hours of their time downloading huge files, splicing them together, and burning discs, without any idea of whether it works or not, just so they can save $60. It's just not worth the time.
razer @ Sep 30th 2006 9:36PM
Yea this hole "news" story is BS! And only leads to n00b lamers like the poster above asking "Is the 360 Modded, is it going to effect cheating"..blah blah blah Don't worry about it because it isn't going to effect your game in any way. 360 people are easily confused, like when you mention a web browser to them they say OMG I WILL GET A VIRUS. When anyone with a a tiny microscopic grasp of computers knows this is basically impossible. These posts will just fuel stupidity.. oh and GoW will be pirated there is no doubt about it.. but so has every other game and the industry is making record profits.. so nothing to see here move along..
Jo @ Sep 30th 2006 9:40PM
You need to burn the 7.2gigs to a dual-layer disc. Most newer burners can do this.
But it looks like this one's a fake. Althoughevery released 360 game has indeed been posted to newsgroups.
But honestly modding you 360 (not much harder than ps2, etc) is pretty lame. You just spent $400 on the thing, is it really a big deal to spend the $60/$120 for the 1 or 2 good games that come out every year?
killjoi @ Sep 30th 2006 9:54PM
I'm out of college. I have a job. I'm too lazy to pirate it even if I wanted to.
Zachary @ Sep 30th 2006 10:01PM
"When was the 360 fully hacked? What mods are out? What's being done about them?"
Yeah I also wondered whatever happened with the whole dvd drive firmware hack thing, I remember the stories and description of how to perform it but I don't remember a whole lot of follow up from Microsoft. Did they do anything?
ill trooper @ Sep 30th 2006 10:17PM
Jigen, just stop. Go watch TV or something.
Steve Roger @ Sep 30th 2006 10:20PM
Thanks!
Just kidding....
Night Elve @ Sep 30th 2006 10:50PM
Dear Diary,
Today i read at Joystiq an article related to a leaked version of Gears of War and a bunch of people got mad with Joystiq :( ...
People is so mean these days dear diary.
Psaakyrn @ Sep 30th 2006 11:06PM
to #11 x silence x
And I've seen better games (unless you consider HL2 to be worse) have their data leaked as well. Granted, companies should've wisened up after that fiasco, but maybe a better hacker got through?
Bill @ Oct 1st 2006 1:35AM
Aww, all the poor little Sony fanboys are probably mad it's fake. Poor babies!
cb @ Oct 1st 2006 2:38AM
Dave, sheez. It's hardly different from pirating a movie. Five minutes to find the files and queue them up, five to ten minutes to unpack the thing, ten or fifteen minutes to burn. Thirty minutes to steal sixty dollars isn't too bad.
NotOfThisEarth @ Oct 1st 2006 12:06PM
Of course this will lead to yet another discourse on the evils of piracy and how it's killing everything from music to puppies while TOTALLY ignoring the fact that the leak would have to have come from inside. Yeah, sure, internet users are the problem. What the fuck do they expect? Would YOU leave a hefty bag full of money out in the street and expect it not to be taken?
the_pwnerer @ Oct 5th 2006 4:22PM
Hey Kevin, I'd be patient if I wasn't on my second broken 360. The day I'll have to pay for repairs will be the day I'll stop paying for 360 games and start pirating them. I've never pirated games, but it seems that Microsoft will be "forcing" you to do it when they start charging for repairs on their crappy console. After all, if they charge me for something that I shouldn't pay and that shouldn't be happening in the first place, I'll hit them where it'll hurt them the most: I'll buy the games for 5-10 bucks each. LOL
I'm not going to do the same for Wii and PS3 if they have much greater quality, just like the cube and PS2.
luke @ Oct 1st 2006 2:26PM
my friend is a level designer for Epic and his current project is GoW. He is still working 12-15 hour days, so guess what- the game is not finished yet..
masonkr @ Oct 1st 2006 2:49PM
Who hoo, thanks for lettine me know! Off to work and thier DS3 connection! Pimp!
fanjob @ Oct 1st 2006 3:34PM
This is turned into a retarded comments thread.