In 2020, PlayStation suffered one of the worst leaks in video game history. Two months before the launch of The Last of Us Part 2, major cutscenes detailing Last of Us 2's plot leaked online. This ended up ruining many of the game's major events for fans, with many accounts online weaponizing the spoilers. This has forever become part of the history of The Last of Us Part 2, and it could be happening again for Horizon: Forbidden West, as an unfinished PS4 build of the upcoming action RPG has leaked online over one month before release.
Horizon: Forbidden West is the long anticipated follow-up to 2017's Horizon: Zero Dawn, an action RPG created by longtime Killzone developer Guerrilla Games. The game received major critical success upon its release and has been praised as one of the PS4's best new IP. Now, after a major delay from it's planned "late 2021" release, the game's sequel is only a few short weeks away and promises to be one of the first big AAA open-world releases to come to PlayStation 5, though it is also receiving a PS4 release.
Coming from VGC, new leaked images have indicated that a full yet unfinished build of Horizon: Forbidden West may be circulating. The build in question reportedly stems from the PlayStation 4 version of the game, and features all of the game's "core content" minus some art assets. VGC also claims that there is no version of the build circulating in pirate and file-sharing sites, indicating that most of the game's story is still likely to remain under wraps before it releases unlike Halo Infinite, which saw many of its leaks come from files found in the game's beta tests that included major story spoilers.
Right now, the leaks for Horizon: Forbidden West boil down to little more than some screenshots of the PS4 version making the rounds, but this could become a much bigger issue with time, especially with how big the situation surrounding The Last of Us Part 2 got, so it might be wise to steer clear of social media and marketing for the game. In the meantime, Sony does appear to be removing social media posts containing the images for copyright infringement, so hopefully the situation won't go too far as to ruin the game for fans, especially so close to launch.
Horizon: Forbidden West will release on February 18th for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Source: VGC