Steam build of Death Stranding 2 leaks two days ahead of launch

The character Neil in Death Stranding 2, who here is posing like Solid Snake.
(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Death Stranding 2 is now available to preload on Steam, but someone got more than a bundle of encrypted files early Tuesday—a pre-release version of Kojima Productions' delivery sim has leaked, and is now making the rounds on piracy websites two days before release.

According to a piracy-focused subreddit, the leak came via Steam, where unencrypted versions of the game files were seemingly made available by mistake. It's unclear how long the files were available, but apparently long enough for the 113GB game to be downloaded in full. While Steam does include its own DRM, it's relatively trivial to circumvent compared to Denuvo—which Death Stranding 2 doesn't use.

As a result, pirates are already able to download and play the game on PC ahead of its official release. Most of the comments in piracy circles so far seem to be focused on the available languages—the pre-release build, notably, is missing Russian voiceovers. Steam supports uploading separate language packages so players can download just the audio files they want to play with.

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Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

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