Forza Horizon 6 Could Have Been Leaked by Someone Who Had Early Access to the Game

One of the biggest scandals of this week was the leak of the PC version of Forza Horizon 6, 9 days before the official release of the game. It was initially reported that this allegedly happened due to a mistake by the developers from Playground Games, who might have accidentally included the wrong files in the Steam updates; however, it turned out that this was not entirely the case.

Soon after Forza Horizon 6 was hacked and became available for free on many free websites, Playground Games issued a statement. They confirmed the fact of the leak and stated that players who gained access to the game would face serious punishment in the form of a franchise-wide ban and a hardware ID block. But what’s more important, the studio admitted that the leak has happened not because of the pre-load issues.

This is also confirmed by a recent SteamDB post on the social network X. According to it, the game might have been leaked by someone who gained early access to Forza Horizon 6—this could potentially be some reviewer, as you can check out below:

“Forza Horizon 6 was very likely leaked by someone with early access to the build (reviewer or similar).

At around the same time, the file list appeared on SteamDB because someone (could be someone else) used our token dumper. SteamDB does not display or share keys, nor can it provide downloads.”

Anyway, it seems that this leak will not affect the game's sales on Steam, since Forza Horizon 6 is leading the sales chart from May 5 to 12, surpassing games like Subnautica 2, Diablo IV, Gamble With Your Friends, and Far Far West. Last month it was revealed that the new Playground Games title has already sold 500,000 copies on Steam, and this, it seems, is far from the limit.

Forza Horizon 6 takes players to Japan, where Tokyo will be the biggest city in Forza Horizon’s history. The game will include more than 550 vehicles at the start, customization, new racing modes, dynamic changes in weather conditions, the ability to buy houses and decorate garages, and more. The game will release on May 19 for PC and Xbox Series X/S. For owners of the Premium Edition or Premium Upgrade, the game will be available 4 days earlier. The version for PlayStation 5 will be available later in 2026.