Sony Santa Monica releases heartfelt anti-spoiler statement following God of War leaks

Following the God of War Ragnarok leaks that made their way online last week, Santa Monica Studios has issued a statement online warning fans and bystanders alike to take advantage of the danger of spoilers in the run-up to the game’s official release. Those eager to jump into the game entirely new will have to be on their guard until November 9 when the game launches.

How did the leaks happen? Good, according to game director Cory Balrog, a retailer selling God of War: Ragnarok early is to blame. There were also some screenshots posted prematurely by a person who had linked their PlayStation and Twitter accounts (oops), but some footage pales in comparison to the entire game in the wild.

“As we get closer to launch, it is important that our studio preserve the God of War Ragnarök experience for players who want to experience the game for the first time without spoilers,” Sony Santa Monica writes in its statement. “We ask that you please be considerate of the many fans who don’t want to accidentally see clips, gameplay, or narrative spoilers and refrain from sharing them more widely.”

“We are doing everything we can to limit the exposure of unauthorized images and screenshots, but the reality is that we cannot capture everything. For those of you who don’t want to risk seeing anything before launch, we strongly recommend that you mute any keywords or hashtags associated with the game until launch day.”

So what are the short-term and long-term consequences of things like this happening? Well, in the short term they are just spoilers. There’s not much you can do about it as an individual, other than stay away from information hubs like Twitter and Reddit, where a loser could post a gif of Kratos drinking henny and your whole life would fall apart. Also expect DMCA attacks from Sony Santa Monica as you try to slap any prominent sources of leaks where you can find them.

Long-term? Well, as Mr. Balrog himself hinted, you could see a growing trend of including dataless discs in retail copies. Basically, this means that when you buy a boxed copy of a game, you get a fancy disc with an installer, forcing you to go home and download the entire package.

This, as Cory acknowledged as a horrible practice, would suck across the board. There are plenty of people out there with poor internet connections who have every right to enjoy a single player action game they paid for without having to wait for hours or hit internet usage limits. If you bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 last week, you experienced exactly this. A largely fictional disc that sent you downloading the vast majority of the game. Blow.

Either way, for now all you should be worrying about are God of War spoilers. Keep those blinders on until November 9!

For more God of War Ragnarok coverage, check out our (spoiler-free!) preview of the game, as well as the exciting trailer recently released for the game.