A pile of Starfield discs sits on a automotive seat in a video posted by Harris.
A Tennessee man has been arrested and charged with a felony after leaking early footage of Bethesda’s upcoming Starfield and making an attempt to promote shrinkwrapped copies days earlier than the sport’s extremely anticipated launch.
According to a Shelby County, Tennessee, arrest report, Darin Harris was booked for felony and misdemeanor counts of theft of property, in addition to possession of managed substances, late on August 24. An incident report obtained by IGN reportedly lists the stolen property in query as “Video Game: Microsoft Starfield unreleased recreation.”
The arrest got here days after the YouTube account “DHavenShadow,” which apparently belongs to Harris, posted roughly 40 minutes of Starfield gameplay (seemingly captured from a cellphone pointed at a TV) to YouTube and different social media channels on August 22 (a spoiler-free itemizing for one such video could be seen in this Internet Archive seize). While the video was rapidly taken down from YouTube by a ZeniMax Media copyright declare, copies of the identical content material unfold throughout the Internet faster than they could possibly be taken down. The footage reportedly acquired over 1 million views on Imgur alone earlier than being taken down there as nicely.
Harris, who promised extra footage to come back in subsequent posts and feedback, additionally responded on to commenters who criticized the gameplay ability in his first leaked video. “I’m not a recreation knowledgeable. I used to be simply attempting one thing out,” he mentioned in a follow-up video. “It’s a great recreation, y’all do not wish to miss this. Starfield for actual.”
Harris then began itemizing Xbox copies of Starfield on a Mercari web page, the place they have been resold for costs starting from $200 for the bottom recreation to $650 for the bonus-packed Constellation Edition. In response to skepticism that the listings have been genuine, Harris posted one other video exhibiting piles of obvious shrinkwrapped copies of Starfield sitting within the passenger seat of his automotive earlier than being packaged in FedEx envelopes.
Leak-watchers on Reddit observed content material on Harris’ numerous accounts starting to vanish on August 23. Other customers observed figuring out data, similar to Harris’ Gamertag, current on the movies he posted.
Kotaku studies that Harris was launched on a $10,000 bail and has been ordered to seem in courtroom on September 8.
This is not the primary time legislation enforcement has been used to punish gamers who leak gameplay footage and data earlier than a recreation’s launch (although earlier instances usually do not embrace gross sales of precise pre-release discs). In 2004, German authorities arrested Axel Gembe for stealing the supply code to Half-Life 2, a narrative memorably retold in this excerpt from Simon Parkin’s ebook Death by Video Game. More lately, a UK teenager was arrested for allegedly leaking extraordinarily early property from the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI.
In 2020, when rumors started to swirl that an worker was accountable for an enormous pre-release leak of content material from The Last of Us Part II, Sony launched a press release saying that the person had been recognized and was “not affiliated with Naughty Dog or [Sony].”
Legitimate copies of Starfield will probably be playable on September 1 for early entry preorders forward of a wider launch on September 6.