Forza Horizon 6 studio threatens ‘franchise-wide and hardware bans’ for anyone playing its pirated leaked build

Forza Horizon 6 studio Playground Games says it will take strict action against anyone it finds playing the pirated release of the game.

The PC version of Forza Horizon 6 leaked over the weekend, with pirates acquiring, cracking and sharing the full game ahead of its May 19 release (May 15 for Premium Edition players).

While the main reason for the leak has not been officially confirmed, the initial theory was that the pre-loaded version of the game may have been uploaded to Steam‘s backend on Sunday by a developer, but done so without any encryption.

Now, in a statement on X, Playground Games has officially confirmed that the pirated copies exist, but also says the reason for the leak wasn’t due to the game being pre-loaded on Steam.

“We are aware of reports that a build of Forza Horizon 6 has been obtained prior to its release and can confirm this is not the result of a pre-load issue,” it said.

The studio also warns that anyone caught playing the pirated version of the game will face action, ranging from bans across the entire Forza series, to outright hardware bans.

“We are taking strict enforcement action against any individuals found accessing this build including franchise-wide and hardware bans,” it stated. “We encourage fans to sit tight for the game’s release on May 19.”

Steam tracking site SteamDB also posted a statement on X regarding the leak, after some pointed to the game’s SteamDB record as ‘proof’ that the game’s data had been uploaded unencrypted, something Playground Games has now denied.

SteamDB says the game “was very likely leaked by someone with early access to the build (reviewer or similar)”, and that the file list appeared on SteamDB because “someone (could be someone else) used our token dumper”.

SteamDB only has access to a limited amount of information on each game until someone who owns the game on Steam uses the site’s ‘token dumper’. This retrieves all possible app tokens from their Steam account and lets SteamDB access a wider ranger of information on the game.

It suggested, then, that someone with the Steam version of the game used the token dumper to make the files visible on SteamDB, but stressed that “SteamDB does not display or share keys, nor can it provide downloads”.