Kingdom Hearts 3 Leaks Prompt Statement From Director

Sometime over the weekend, footage and images of Kingdom Hearts III surfaced online, leading many to believe that retail copies of the game have leaked. Warnings posted by fans on Twitter contain images of the install screen and someone holding an Xbox One copy.

The leaks have prompted a statement from Director Tetsuya Nomura, requesting fans not to share any videos and spoilers. However, the statement doesn’t make it clear how the footage leaked and where the leak came from. Considering Kingdom Hearts III is more than a month away from release and there are no reports of copies being shipped to stores yet, we aren’t sure if this was a retailer violation. Was it an internal leak? Was a third party behind it? Nomura says he knows exactly what happened but it looks like he plans to keep mum about it.

The statement reads:

We’re aware that a small portion of Kingdom Hearts III has been circulating online before its official release. We are also aware as to how this has all happened. We’re sorry to see this caused concern amongst our fans who are excited for the release.

The whole team has been working together since yesterday night (Japan time) to investigate what we can do to better this situation, but first we would like to ask that you do not share these videos.

The game’s epilogue and secret movie, which are the biggest spoilers in this game, are planned to be released at a later date just in case, so they will not be shown before the game’s release.

We want everyone to be able to equally experience the full game after its release, so we ask for your continued support on this matter.

We’re also very grateful that our fans have been warning each other already about the spoilers. Thank you very much.

Kingdom Hearts III will release on January 29, 2019 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

[Source: Kingdom Hearts (Twitter)]