Halo 4 Has Leaked. Evacuate the Internet!

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I suppose this was inevitable.  A highly anticipated game, the long awaited return of an iconic character, the culmination of an unprecedented two year marketing push… of course, Halo 4 was going to leak.  It doesn’t make the news suck any less, though.  So what do we do now?  Retreat to our underground faraday cages for the next three weeks?  Maybe, maybe not.  Read on for the details, and a survival strategy.

The news broke over the weekend, as images of the Halo 4 DVDs began surfacing, followed by torrents of the game appearing on… well, you know where.  343 Industries was quick to respond with a blog post on their official website, warning fans to be wary of spoilers.  In that same blog post, they promised Microsoft security teams were on the case, and that any illegal downloading of Halo 4 would be dealt with harshly.  True to their word, the same sites that hosted torrents of the game are now filling with users lamenting the fact that they have been permanently banned from Xbox Live.  And it’s not just the torrenting sites.  Any unauthorized images and videos that make it onto the web disappear almost as fast as they appear.  Microsoft’s army of ninjas are apparently as swift as they are deadly.

And it’s not just Microsoft pursuing those who want to spoil the game.  While it’s a no-brainer that Microsoft is policing their own Halo forums fiercely, Bungie, the creators and former developers of the Halo franchise, are also cracking down hard.  Posting spoilers on Bungie’s forum will get your thread locked and your account suspended.  Other outlets such as NeoGAF and Reddit have been decidedly less strict in their removal of spoilers.

343 Industries even went so far as to pass along a leak survival guide put together by the friendly folks over at Ready Up Live.  Check it out below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-76RmjjzrY

So there you have it.  A pretty thorough guide to avoiding the spoilers which are now coarsing through the veins of the internet like cobra venom.  Of course, there is another school of thought to this situation.  Maybe you want to be spoiled.  I admit to feeling the temptation to hunt them down, if only to avoid the pain that would come from a disappointing story.  I accidently spoiled myself on the endings of Mass Effect 3, but in retrospect, I’m glad I did.  If I had experienced the last five minutes of that game with no prior knowledge of what was awaiting me… well, let’s just say that I would have given my Xbox’s aerodynamic abilities a good test.

Now I’m not trying to insinuate that Halo 4 will have an ending anywhere near as bad as Mass Effect 3.  Frankly, I think that would be impossible.  But if you’re the kind of person who (like me) gets a little too emotionally invested in the lives of fictional characters, sniffing out a few spoilers might not be the worst thing you’ve ever done.  But let’s give 343 the benefit of the doubt here, OK?  They’ve earned the chance to wow us, so let’s go into Halo 4 clean.  If it sucks, then we can rage and feast upon all the Halo 5 and 6 spoilers we want.  But if it’s great, well… let’s just hope that it is.


About the Author: (@Joe_of_the_Dead) Lead Editor, Writer

Joe was born in a time of war. A console war. Two electronic titans were locked in a heated battle for the living rooms of America. Which titans, you ask? Well, the Fairchild Channel F and the Atari 2600 of course. You see, Joe is old. So many of his favorite games tend to be on the older side as well. But that hasn’t stopped him from developing unhealthy obsessions with such modern franchises as Halo and Mass Effect. Just don’t tell him how long it’s been since the original Metroid was released. His aging heart can’t take the shock.

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