Forza Horizon 6 was leaked the other day, with 155 gigabytes of unencrypted files appearing on SteamDB. This allowed many to download the files and get the game early, about four days before early access and nine days before full release. Although initially believed to be a mistake on behalf of the developers Playground Games, they have confirmed it was not a pre-load issue as many suggested, where many had originally thought it to be an error that could severely jeopardize Microsoft’s profits by the millions of dollars. Playground Games has not responded to the leak lightly either, stating in an X-post that they were “taking strict enforcement action against any individuals found accessing this build including franchise-wide and hardware bans”.
However this is no ordinary ban, in fact this is possibly the harshest ban-sentence ever seen for a game, with those who downloaded the files quite literally banned from Forza Horizon 6 for 7,973 years- for those wondering, that is until the year 9,999 AD, or until the end of the current decamillennium. Whether Microsoft, Xbox, the Forza franchise, video games, or even humanity will still be around by then is unsure (and for most of those unlikely), but one can say for certain that those who downloaded the leaked files will not be playing anytime soon. This has not stopped prominent Forza modder DVS Squad, who uploaded a video (which has since been taken down) of himself driving around in Forza Horizon 6, saying he isn’t actually that bothered by the ban as it only set back his in-game progress, which he can recover by playing on another account. He has been banned before he says, and it has not stopped him from circumventing previous bans.
Funny enough, DVS Squad, despite mocking the devs in his video, also went on to compliment the graphics, saying “It may look choppy, but trust me, when the game comes out or if you played the game, you already know the game is absolutely stunning”. While 7,973 years is a lot, perhaps we will find some way to reverse aging or cure death, letting those unfortunate enough to be banned finally live to play Forza Horizon 6 many centuries from now- or perhaps that is a delusional but thought-provoking fantasy.