Death Stranding 2 on PC has leaked already after Steam pre-load error

Typically when you pre-load a game on Steam, the game files are downloaded in an encrypted format and then you have to sit and wait for the files to decrypt once the game is officially available. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the Death Stranding 2 pre-load set up, resulting in the full game leaking into piracy sites. 

Pirates can play Death Stranding 2 on PC a full day early. As spotted by PCGamer, the game has already been uploaded to piracy sites, as one early pre-order customer discovered that Steam had pre-loaded the game files completely unencrypted.

It is unclear how long the unencrypted version of the game was available for, but it would have been long enough for one person to download the entire 113GB game. As Death Stranding doesn't use any aggressive DRM like Denuvo, that meant that the game was easy to crack and load up in full. Assuming the leaker had a Gigabit connection, the entire game could have been downloaded in roughly 20 minutes.

Death Stranding 2 doesn't officially release on PC until tomorrow. The full game on Steam should unlock for pre-loaders by 2PM (UK time) tomorrow.

KitGuru Says: It is unfortunate that pirates now get early access to Death Stranding 2 ahead of pre-order customers. My big question is, was the fault here on Steam's end? Or did the team in charge of the game's Steam page make a configuration error? 

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