Assassin's Creed Valhalla Gameplay Leak Has Ubisoft Scrambling To Remove Footage
Over the weekend, around 30 minutes of gameplay footage from Assassin's Creed Valhalla leaked online, and as you might imagine, developer/publisher Ubisoft is not the least bit pleased with the situation. Just the opposite, Ubisoft is trying to get the unauthorized footage removed from the web, and has been successful so far.
The footage found its way to YouTube, where it was eventually taken down. Then a short while later, a user on Reddit posted the 30 minutes of leaked content in three chunks on Streamable, and all three of those videos have been removed "due to a copyright claim by the content owner" as well. That content owner would be Ubisoft.
It is entirely possible that the video(s) will show up somewhere else on the web—it could turn into a sort of cat and mouse game between the Internet community and Ubisoft. As of this writing, however, we are not aware of any other sources for the leaked footage.
Part of what makes this interesting is that Assassin's Creed Valhalla was one of the more anticipated games that we hoped would be shown off during Microsoft's Xbox Series X gameplay reveal event in May. Unfortunately, the event did not live up to the hype, with barely any video shown of actual gameplay footage for any titles, including Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Instead, we got mostly cinematic trailers.
Microsoft acknowledged the disappointment, and blamed it on poor communication.
"Had we not said anything & just shown May Inside Xbox show like we did last month, I suspect reactions might have been different. Clearly we set some wrong expectations & that’s on us. We appreciate all the feedback & can assure you we will take it all in & learn as a team," Aaaron Greenberg, general manager of Xbox Games Marketing, stated on Twitter at the time.
The gameplay footage that leaked over the weekend was classified as a "work in progress" version of the game. It depicted a mission tasking the player with carrying out an assault on the Burgh Castle in East Anglia, which is a place that exists in the real world. Much of what was shown looked similar to Assassin's Creed Odyssey, in terms of inventory management and combat.
The countdown to #UbiForward is on! Get a sneak peek at what's coming and join the celebration live on July 12 pic.twitter.com/2rJ7nhKEt2
— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) July 3, 2020
While no longer viewable, Ubisoft may provide sanctioned gameplay footage during its upcoming Ubisoft Forward event next Sunday, July 12. Or at least we hope it will.
Either way, this will be the publisher's first digital conference, in light of cancelled events due to COVID-19, and it promises an "E3-style showcase with plenty of exclusive game news, exciting reveals, and much more."
