If the latest rumours are true, they point to a massive error by Microsoft’s Xbox team. According to PS3 hacker Mathieulh (via NeoGaf), and also still visible via Google Search Cache, it appears as though the recent Gears of War 3 build that leaked to torrent sites last month was inadvertently made available through the Xbox Codify page.
The offending sections of the website that hosted the developer build of Gears of War 3 have been taken offline, but as Google Search Cache still reveals right now, the pages were indeed there at some point. The first page indicates a simple directory located on xbox.codify.com marked “/GOW3/GEARS-OF-WAR-3-CONFIDENTIAL/”, and subsequent directories, such as the one cached, included the game’s content. The second cached page shows game assets; all directories seemed to be accessible without any sort of password, encryption or other security method in place.
Codify, hosts of xbox.codify.com where the GOW3 build was found, offer “software engineering and managed hosting.” They appear to be an Australian-based company and on their website front page there is a testimonial from a Microsoft manager, which indicates that the company does deal with Microsoft in some capacity. We dug deeper to see if Microsoft was the actual source of the leak.
We called Codify to see in what capacity they worked with Microsoft. The director there said that they simply hosted a server for the Xbox team at Microsoft, which further points to Microsoft accidentally leaking their own game. They said they would follow this up with Microsoft and contact us, so we’ll keep you posted of any further developments as Microsoft responds.