Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts 3 is one of the most hotly-anticipated released of 2019, so the fact that physical copies have been appearing over a month before the game’s release has sent everyone into a frenzy.
Heads up, Kingdom Hearts fans:
The full version (!) of KH3 appears to be out in the wild (some screenshots and videos exist that I won’t share here)
But yeah, be careful on both social media and YouTube pic.twitter.com/6QKhu31IaZ
— Nibel (@Nibellion) December 15, 2018
The title has a release date of 25th January 2019, but the released copies of the game are already causing huge issues for the KH team and its fans.
People are scrambling to stay away from the expected onslaught of spoilers, tweets and videos of gameplay, while Square Enix scrambles to contain the situation.
The official social media pages for Kingdom Hearts have posted a statement from the company, apologising to its fans for the mistake.
The statement, which you can read in full below, says: “The whole team has been working together since yesterday night (Japan time) to investigate what we can do to better this situation.”
The game’s director Tetsuya Nomura also confirms they know where the leak has come from, but adds that the game’s epilogue and secret movie – the most spoiler-ific parts of the game – haven’t been released, so at least those won’t be cropping up online anytime soon.
An important message for #KingdomHearts III from Director Tetsuya Nomura: pic.twitter.com/j9aVRFTS5B
— KINGDOM HEARTS (@KINGDOMHEARTS) December 16, 2018
Fans are banding together and showing their support for the company, Square Enix and each other.
The kingdom hearts community is really amazing. Everyone is supporting and warning each other to prevent spoiler. Same thing with Super Smash Bros Ultimate when everyone got upset of the leaks and piracy. I’m glad to see people supporting the hard working team behind any game!
— Nintendo Switch R̞o̦̭͚̭͓X̭̜̣̖͠a͈̖͎̙s – Road to 13k (@LPGamesCOM) December 16, 2018
I think at the end of today as I reflect upon it, we as the Kingdom Hearts community have grown stronger and more understanding. Are we upset? Yes. Did we expect a statement from Numora? No. But the statement shows how much the dev team cares for us fans
— Santa Magus, Website Commissions Open (@ProfessorMagus) December 16, 2018
Will you be hunting for spoilers?