Halo: Reach Leaked From Xbox Live

So here’s the problem with using a highly unorthodox method of sharing review copy for your highly anticipated new edition of a historically popular franchise with reviewers, namely, putting it up for sale on your online store for anyone who has the proper code.

The problem is: it is very likely that people will find a way to trick your servers and subsequently obtain and leak the game.

Apparently Microsoft hadn’t figured that out exactly when it put Halo: Reach on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Four days ago, Halo: Reach appeared on the Xbox Live Marketplace for the low, low price of $1,250.  But even if you managed to scrape together 99,999 MS points, you’d still have to enter a 25-character code in order to actually get the game.

But, as Joystiq points out:

Modders at Game-Tut.com found a way to trick Microsoft’s servers… It appears that the game is leaking other places as well — at least one video shows off a tour of Forge in the game’s Firefight mode, and spoilers for the game can be found everywhere from Bungie’s official forums to NeoGAF.

Halo: Reach will not be officially released for another month, and when it is released it will not be available anywhere except a retail store, so it remains a mystery as to why Microsoft decided to distribute digital review copies in this way in the first place.