Before we got “Star Wars: Battlefront”, another iteration of the game was in development under a different studio, but was eventually cancelled in favor of the new game that we saw in the end. Back when the cancellation came to light, it was a controversial topic in the community of the franchise’s fans, and many people were skeptical towards the idea of seeing the new game with its changed face. But in the end, “Battlefront” came out to mostly good reviews and people were generally happy with how the game turned out.
Recently, someone has apparently managed to get their hands on an unreleased, never before seen copy of the original version of the game, the one that was under development by Free Radical. And instead of just releasing videos and/or screenshots, the person took things one step further and delivered links to the actual leaked version of the game, allowing players to check out what it could have looked like if things had gone differently.
Of course, fans hoping to give the leaked copy a try should keep some things in mind. On one hand, it’s impossible to verify the legitimacy of the source, so it might happen that the game has a little more attached to it than meets the eye. Fans should be wary of potential viruses and other similar problems, and this is definitely something to consider before downloading software of unknown origins.
On the other hand, there is also the potential ethical issue with accessing unfinished work that was never meant to be released in this state. Game developers are usually very sensitive about people playing their products outside of the planned releases. Games in this state tend to be very buggy and not really representative of what the finished product would have looked like, and there have even been cases throughout the history of the gaming industry where a company has had the reputation of one of their projects ruined because of an unexpected leak. Even games that are highly renowned as classics nowadays have faced this risk, such as “Half-Life 2” which was actually jeopardized severely by a leak that resulted from the hacking of Valve’s servers. The game ended up releasing successfully and without any issues, admittedly, but even the director of the studio was reportedly worried about how things would turn out after the company was hit by the disaster.
It’s also important to note that not everyone can actually play the leaked game, as it’s a console development version. What this means is that it requires some specialized hardware in order to even run, and more specifically it requires an Xbox 360 development kit. Emulators are available as well, and there are generally various possibilities for testing the game, but it’s not a release aimed at the general consumer.
It would be interesting to see how people react to this leak after they’ve had a chance to play the actual final version of the game that was developed after the project switched hands. Obviously, it should be a vastly different experience, but whether or not this version of the game would have been better than what we actually got is hard to tell, especially given its leaked nature.
This could actually benefit the developers of the franchise, according to some, as it could give them ideas for what fans would like to see in the next installment or any future DLCs that they might be planning. It’s hard to gauge the wishes of fans from just their opinions about the current title, but if they’re actually given something else to directly compare against, that makes things a lot more different and could open the doors to some interesting discussions in the community.