Forza Horizon 6 files leaked online after a dev made a fatal two-click mistake on Steamworks. We break down the Reddit drama and the technical oopsie.
I was grinding some code at 3 AM, scrolling through Reddit to keep myself awake, when I saw a post that made me spit out my coffee: Forza Horizon 6 files have completely leaked. And no, it wasn't because of some elite Russian hacker syndicate breaching the mainframe. It was an inside job—an accidental "fat finger" from a fellow dev.
Here's the TL;DR: The devs at Forza were setting up the Steam preload for the game. Normally, this means uploading heavily encrypted data chunks so gamers can download them early and wait for the release day patch to unlock the game. But nope! Somehow, the unencrypted build was thrown straight onto Steam's servers.
The result? Gamers preloaded the game and... boom. The raw files are sitting right there on their SSDs. No DRM to bypass, no cracking needed. Whoever hit that deploy button is probably having the worst morning of their life right now.
The thread on r/gaming exploded with over 2k upvotes. The comment section is a goldmine of gamer culture and dev solidarity.
1. The "Source Plz" Brigade: Gamers never change. The top replies are just people casually asking for the hookup. User NikosAkaSniperEXE hit them with the classic: “Adding a link is free of charge.” Followed by the obligatory “source?” comments. Good luck with that, guys.
2. The Historians: Veteran gamers immediately got PTSD from past dev blunders. Dubsbaduw sighed, “Doom eternal situation all over again.” Another user correctly pointed out that Doom actually released without DRM, making this more akin to the Death Stranding 2 leak, where files hit the web a couple of days early.
3. The Dev Insight (The Real MVP): This is where it gets interesting for us at C4F. Someone asked how this even happens, assuming Steam auto-encrypts preloads. Enter Anistezian, a user who clearly has some backend scars to share:
“Steam doesn’t do anything. Usually the release build specialist... would upload a build that doesn’t contain the ‘bin’ folder so you can’t effectively launch the game. I can tell you from experience that uploading the wrong build is a very simple mistake because it’s a two clicks process in the horrendous Steamworks UI. I was always triple checking before pressing the button.”
What can we devs learn from this catastrophic bruh moment?
First, terrible internal UI/UX is the root of all evil. If a UI is so bad that a multi-million dollar AAA game can be leaked in "two clicks," that UI needs a rework. Hell, if your ping is high while working remotely, maybe turn on a game booster just so the Steamworks UI doesn't lag while you're trying to click the RIGHT build.
Second, human error is inevitable, but missing fail-safes is a choice. If you're managing CI/CD pipelines or release builds, write a damn script that blocks the upload if a .exe or a bin folder is detected in a preload package. Automate your safety nets!
GG to the Forza team. Hopefully, this doesn't hurt their sales too much—most hardcore racing fans will buy it anyway for the online multiplayer. As for the dev who pushed the build... press F to pay respects.
Source: Reddit
