An early version of a playable guild of Gods & Monsters was accidentally released on Stadia. Ubisoft was quick to clear any footage of the game.
This past weekend, Google Stadia made headlines after reportedly releasing—by accident—an unfinished demo version of Gods & Monsters by Ubisoft. It only went live for 30 minutes, but hundreds of gamers were able to catch the game.
Its game developer was quick with initiating damage control over the fiasco. The makers hunted any footage or snapshots of it online, according to media outlets.
The Gods & Monsters Google Stadia leak
Last Thursday, users of the Google platform were quick to notice a mysterious game titled Orpheus. Of course, the “$0.00” price tag only strengthened gamers’ curiosity. Hence, they ended up downloading the game.
Gamers were welcomed with a surprise when the game turned out to be Ubisoft’s Gods & Monsters. Accordingly, the fantasy RPG was set to be released last February but was delayed—like all others slated for 2020—due to the pandemic.
As it turns out, the obvious-looking early state of the playable build was an E3 2019 demo version by Ubisoft. The gaming giant confirmed the leak to indeed be Gods & Monsters—a supposed upcoming title this 2020.
A statement from Ubisoft Quebec executive Marc-Alexis Cote was sent to Eurogamer, which reads:
“Our vision for the game formerly known as Gods and Monsters has evolved in surprising ways, which is common when developing exciting new worlds. This footage is from our E3 2019 demo, which was shown to select press last June and is now over one year old. Much has changed since then in terms of features, tone, art and character design, and even the name of the game. We are hard at work and very excited to finally show players what we have created at the end of summer.”
The management over at Google Stadia has since apologized for the slip-up. They issued a statement to Kotaku, saying:
“Regretfully, on Thursday morning, we mistakenly made an E3 2019 demo version of Gods & Monsters from Ubisoft available on the Stadia store that was not intended for the public to play. A few hundred gamers were able to play it for less than 30 minutes. We sincerely apologize to our partners at Ubisoft for this mistake.”
Ubisoft tries to clear trails of the leak
Per the PlayStation LifeStyle, the Assasin’s Creed makers have since been “scrubbing any videos” of the leaked gameplay. Posts on Reddit has since been removed.
A short video of Gods and Monsters gameplay!
byu/TheMoonsaults inStadia
Unfortunately, there are still quite a lot of snippets emerging online, most especially on YouTube and on Twitter. The gameplay leak is now a subject of a few debates within Ubisoft’s fanbase community.
There have been claims that gamers should not be too quick to judge the graphic quality of the video game, as what was leaked was an unfinished demo. It is highly likely that the game’s quality is surely far smoother than what was seen by the public now.
Nevertheless, the gameplay does bring out a “mix between The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Greek mythology.” It is reportedly due to the fact the same team behind Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is working on Gods & Monsters.
Despite the leak, the Greek mythology-themed video game looks like it has a lot of potential upon release. More details and updates will be provided by Ubisoft in its next “Ubisoft Forward” event.
Featured image courtesy of Ubisoft North America/YouTube Screenshot