Fake Starfield leaks continue to keep community on its toes as fabricated spoilers hit social media
A handful of social media users are brewing a space storm in a teacup
The long-awaited Starfield release is finally near after years of development and delays, sending anticipation levels among fans to a fever pitch. What could be worse, then, than having something that you’ve waited so long to play spoiled?
The threat of Starfield leaks currently has the community on its toes. That caution is probably wise given how frequently NDAs crumble, though plenty of what’s threating your feeds right now seems to come from some pretty dodgy sources.
Over Starfield’s development, we’ve seen several ‘leaks’ – an image that ended up being an AI render, one that looked more convincing, a two-year-old information dump that following marketing blasts have both strengthened and weakened, and so on.
The latest worry is that Starfield story spoilers are being freely posted online. Fans initially flagged that Bethesda’s latest lore dump on timelines appears to confirm something a leaker posted over 50 days ago. Since then, others warn that griefers are going out of their way to post ‘spoilers’ on Reddit and Twitter where fans might see them. While you couldn’t verify the claims of every post on the internet, the false reviews involving old marketing material or spoilers involving scenes from other games entirely are easier to debunk.
We've spent several hours actively searching for information on these leaks. Beyond a series of posts on controversial message board dating back to 2021, we've found little evidence of new content leaks. Many of the 'leaks' appear to stem from a handful of fan-based PlayStation Twitter accounts that have made their desire to diminish Starfield's reputation clear, but there's no reason to believe that these accounts have any information about Starfield or its story that hasn't been shared by Bethesda.
As ever, leaks around major games are common. Modern Warfare 3 and Assassin’s Creed Jade are some of the more recent, and other big releases of 2023 like Diablo 4 and Final Fantasy 16 also had their fair share. As such, it’s always worth muting certain keywords as they appear on social media or more generally keeping an eye out as one of your most-anticipated games nears. It might mean missing a leak, or, at the very least, someone trying to waste your time.
If you want some Starfield information you can safely believe without spoilers, the devs recently answered 16 questions from the community and issued a warning: "Don't get caught with those harvested organs".
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Iain joins the GamesRadar team as Deputy News Editor following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When not helping Ali run the news team, he can be found digging into communities for stories – the sillier the better. When he isn’t pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new hat, you’ll find him amassing an army of Pokemon plushies.