If you were planning to wait for Forza Horizon 6 to drop officially on May 19, here's some news that will either frustrate you or confirm you made the right call: the entire game leaked online over a week before launch, and Playground Games is not happy about it.
How 155GB ended up in the wrong hands
According to multiple reports that surfaced over the weekend, 155 gigabytes of unencrypted Forza Horizon 6 files appeared on SteamDB. The timing made it worse: the files showed up four days before early access was set to begin and nine days before the general May 19 launch date. That window gave anyone paying attention more than enough time to pull the files before anyone could react.
Here's the thing about Steam preloads: they're supposed to work on a lock-and-key system. Players download the files in an encrypted format, and when the game officially goes live, Steam pushes a decryption update that makes everything playable. What appears to have happened with Forza Horizon 6 is that the preload and its decryption key were pushed simultaneously, or at least close enough together that the files were accessible without the usual protection in place. The result was the full game sitting on piracy sites within hours.
Playground Games has confirmed this was not caused by a preload issue on their end, though the exact origin of the decryption error has not been publicly disclosed.
Reddit threads documenting the leak on piracy sites started getting pulled, with Reddit's Legal Operations team removing at least one prominent post. Reports also emerged of players streaming the game early, which Microsoft will almost certainly treat the same way as downloading it.
Playground's response: bans, not apologies
Playground Games issued a statement on social media that left little room for interpretation. The studio confirmed the leak was real, denied it came from a preload misconfiguration, and went straight to consequences.
"We are taking strict enforcement action against any individuals found accessing this build including franchise-wide and hardware bans," the studio stated. "We encourage fans to sit tight for the game's release on May 19."
Franchise-wide bans mean losing access to every Forza title tied to your account. Hardware bans go further, targeting the device itself rather than just the account. That's a significant escalation for what some might treat as a victimless early play session.
FH6 Steam preload details
The commercial picture heading into launch
Despite the leak, Forza Horizon 6 was sitting as the second top-selling game by revenue on Steam at the time of writing, and the third most-wishlisted title on the platform. That suggests the leak has not meaningfully dented pre-purchase momentum, at least not yet.
The game launches across PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5, and will be available through Game Pass on day one. Steam is expected to drive a significant portion of standalone sales, which makes the timing of this leak particularly painful for Microsoft. Losing even a fraction of that audience to piracy in the week before launch is exactly the kind of outcome publishers spend considerable resources trying to prevent.
Microsoft has not confirmed whether the leak will affect launch timing or early access plans. As of now, early access still begins May 15 for eligible players, with full launch following on May 19. For everything you need to know about early access options and what they cost, the details are worth checking before the window opens.
For players who want to get up to speed on what the full game actually contains before jumping in, our Forza Horizon 6 guides collection covers the Japan map, Car Meets, cover cars, edition breakdowns, and launch specifics in full.
