GAMES CONSOLE FLOGGER Microsoft is reacting against the leak of its Halo Reach game for the XBox.

The XBox only game that was developed by Bungie has popped up on filesharing sites after someone twigged to the fact that Microsoft had put it online for reviewers to download and took advantage of that.

The game, a 7GB download, was available through the Bungie store for a whole lot of XBox points, or approximately £800, and we suspect that this is how it fell into the hands of crackers, seeders and ultimately fraggers.

Microsoft was apparently letting reviewers get their hands on the game via this site with a password - and we all know that passwords are not worth the sticky notes they are written on. One must have slipped out and fallen into the wrong hands, and the rest is history.

Videos of people playing the game appeared over the weekend on the popular video sharing site Youtube, however at the time of publishing it appears that Microsoft used an energy sword to excise all such content.

For its part Bungie is asking users of its Halo Reach forums to avoid the download, and indeed the Internet, for fear that they'll be exposed to storyline spoilers from what was supposed to be a closely-guarded plotline.

Talking about the efforts made on its own forums, the company said, "The moderation team is doing their best, but if you want to stay 100 per cent spoiler free, our best advice is to 'go dark' by staying off all internet gaming forums until you have played through the game!" µ