Assassin’s Creed Shadows leaks surface one month early, prompting Ubisoft to clamp down on unauthorized sneak peeks.

In typical shinobi style, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has slipped through the cracks of physical and digital retail and sneakishly released itself a month ahead of schedule. The game is due to launch on 20th March, but people are already posting photographs of boxed copies, while others say they’ve managed to lift a code from the crevices of the PlayStation store.

Videos of the game have been popping up on Youtube like Ninja Whac-a-Moles, no sooner seen than shurikened by Ubisoft’s lawyers. Quite how all this has happened remains to be explained, but Ubisoft are naturally rather annoyed. They’ve put out statements asking people to avoid sharing spoilers, plus the boilerplate cautionary note that any footage you encounter isn’t representative of the quality of the final game.

“We are aware players have accessed Assassin’s Creed Shadows ahead of its official release,” the Assassin’s Creed community team write on Reddit. “The development team is still working on patches to prepare the experience for launch and any footage shared online does not represent the final quality of the game.

“Leaks are unfortunate and can diminish the excitement for players. We kindly ask you not to spoil the experience for others. Thank you to our community for already taking steps to protect everyone from spoilers. Stay in the shadows, avoid the spoilers, and keep an eye on our channel for more official surprises in the coming weeks!”

The desire to avoid spoilers aside, I’m interested in the phenomenon of players who regard the “official” build-up to a game’s release as an extension of the experience. As I confessed last year, I no longer have the bodily wherewithal to Get Hype. Umpteen years of reporting on vaporous prospects like Half-Life 3 and Bloodborne‘s PC port have fritzed my adrenaline glands and lowered my maximum excitement setting to “slightly piqued”. I can get it up to “grinning with anticipation” but only by using irony as a prop, which is like replacing a blown-out tyre with a wheel of cheese. So I look with a certain nostalgia on redditors who are willing to become the enforcers of a publisher’s marketing campaign, rooting out those who share things before the appointed time, so that everybody can be Hype on schedule.

Ubisoft have reason to be extra-annoyed about anything that might disrupt Assassin’s Creed’s progress towards selling a gazillion copies. They’re currently looking to secure a major “transaction” of some kind, possibly a Tencent buyout, after a year of disappointing financial returns. Shadows, which has been repeatedly delayed for final polishing after a dissatisfactory showing for last years Star Wars Outlaws, has become a pivotal release as Ubisoft cut costs elsewhere.

Will it be what they’re hoping for? “I think there’s a strong chance,” Ed Thorn (RPS in peace) wrote earlier this year after four hours with a build. “What I played was a lot of comforting Creeding, carried along by a gorgeous interpretation of Edo Japan, and some subtle tweaks to up stealth stakes. Although I do think the two protagonists are a split personality that doesn’t quite work for me.”