Microsoft shuts down Gears of War leakers' accounts

Think you can post footage from an unannounced game and get away with it? Think again! Microsoft is punishing those who leaked the game by removing them from a testing program.

VMC Games is a contract company handling the testing of the game. Microsoft is removing them from VMC’s program, permanently banning their Xbox Live accounts.Kotaku managed to get their hands on an e-mail that suggests Microsoft even went one step further by disabling their console altogether. The e-mail says that Microsoft had "temporarily blocked all [the leakers'] Xbox One privileges - meaning that for a period of time which Microsoft decides on depending on the severity of the offense, their Xbox One is entirely unusable."Microsoft has since denied this claim. It said that even if a console has been “suspended from Xbox Live for a violation of the Terms of Use, it can still be used offline. Microsoft enforcement action does not result in a console becoming unusable.”Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was rated by Brazil’s ratings board, so we knew of its existence. But Microsoft didn’t take too kindly to game footage being released into the wild. The footage is still available on Polygon, as you can see below.Gears of War fans have just one month to wait to hear all the news about this upcoming game. Microsoft will reveal the game officially at E3 in June.