As one of the most high-profile Xbox games this year, Extreme Race: Horizon 6 was leaked a week before its official launch on May 19th. A day ago, the developer Playground Games uploaded the game preloading file to Steam but did not encrypt it, leading to the game being downloaded and decrypted by a stolen player. Although Microsoft quickly corrected the error and encrypted the Steam version of the game, losses have been incurred and the breakout version of Horizon 6 has begun to spread over the Internet. According to a deleted post at the Reddit Forum, a player downloading a deciphered game was blocked by Microsoft on the grounds of “false/use unauthorized modules”, for a period of 31 December 1999. Worse still, Microsoft Ban ‘ s IP address, even if it changed the account number, could not be accessed on the computer.
Although there are some hard-ID deceptive tools on the market that attempt to circumvent such bans, they are not recommended for use where necessary because they are unreliable and may even be infected with malicious software. The only reliable way to circumvent the hardware ID ban is to replace a completely new master plate for computers, but this is costly, especially in the light of the recent surge in PC component prices. It is noteworthy that Xbox and Playground Games responded to the leak, claiming that the leaked version did not come from Steam pre-loading documents and vowing to impose a “serial and hardware ban” on any user found to have access to the version. Playground Games states: “We have been informed of reports of the leaking of the early version of Extreme Race: Horizon 6, and confirms that this is not the result of pre-loading problems. We will impose severe penalties on any person who has access to that earlier version, including the Horizon series and the hardware ban. Please wait for the game to be officially sold on 19 May.”
