NEO: The World Ends With Youis a sequel over a decade in the making. Fans of the original RPG have remained a small but incredibly loyal community, hopeful but without unhealthy expectations about what might be next forThe World Ends With You. Since its announcement, those fans have anxiously awaitedNEO: The World Ends With You’s launch on July 27. It seems, however, their patience may have been rewarded earlier than expected.
It appears thatNEO: The World Ends With Youfor the Nintendo Switch has leaked early, unlocking for those who purchased the game in a specific way. That meansNEO: The World Ends With Youis fully playable today, July 17, ten days earlier thanNEO: TWEWY’s release date. As such, fans should probably be wary of spoilers on social media up through launch.
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Here is how the leak works. Those who pre-ordered a physical copy ofNEO: The World Ends With Youthrough the officialSquare Enixstore received a receipt. This receipt included a code that, for all intents and purposes, unlocks a full copy ofNEO: The World Ends With Youon Nintendo Switch. Those who used the code were able to download the full game, with many already having sunk hours into the game.
Reports since have indicated that Square Enix is no longer sending out these codes with purchases ofNEO: The World Ends With You, but it was live for some six or more hours after it was first discovered. It is unclear how many people were able to claim a copy of theaction-RPG, as well as download the game afterward, but it seems as if it was a lot. As far as pre-launch leaks go, this is one of the oddest and largest to ever come from an official source.
To be clear, the leak came only from the Square Enix storefront in North America. No other storefronts gave out full copies of the game that were already unlocked. There were rumors that Amazon was also giving out similar codes, but those codes kept the game locked. Amazon’s codes only unlockedpre-loading, not the game. Further, the proper Square Enix leak is no longer available.
Obviously, with some fans waiting a very long time wto experienceNEO: The World Ends With You, this isn’t a great thing to have happened.NEO: TWEWYspoilersare going to ruin the experience for some, which is too many, and the game’s launch performance could be hurt as a result. Waiting an extra ten days would have been preferable to a leak, especially for a sequel so many have been waiting for for so long.
NEO: The World Ends With Youreleases July 27 on PS4 and Switch.
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