7 Video Game Stories That Were Spoiled Before Release

2. StarCraft II: Heart Of The Swarm

Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm
Blizzard

While the Modern Warfare 3 leak was definitely a lot bigger than this one, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm's is more notable because it occurred years before the release of the game. Yep - years.

An expansion pack following on from StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm was on the receiving end of a bizarre leak towards the end of 2010, when a video popped up online that seemed to depict the closing moments of the game.

While it was unfinished (storyboards were peppered throughout and certain shots weren't fully rendered), a company watermark on the lower-right of the clip indicated that it was legitimate, and sure enough, when the game finally came out in 2013, its ending cinematic bore a striking resemblance to the leaked version.

So, just to reiterate, the actual ending of the game leaked years in advance. Crazy. You'd think that being so far out from launch would've given the developers plenty of time to re-work the story and craft a new finale, but obviously, that wasn't the case.

To this day, it's not clear exactly how this video slipped through the cracks, but regardless, it must've sucked for StarCraft fans who stumbled across it.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!