The software giant has issued a statement promising an ‘aggressive investigation’ of the leak, meanwhile Bungie have asked for spoilers to not be posted online before the game’s September 14 release.

It was reported on Friday that Microsoft had rather foolishly made the game available for download from their servers for pre-release media reviews.

The game was only accessible to download if you had a code, which was distributed to select media outlets. As you’d expect, crackers managed to bypass this and snagged the game early.

It doesn’t appear that the game has leaked massively onto the internet yet, judging by a cursory bit torrent search, but the plot lines and spoilers have made the rounds and moderators from Bungie’s forums have said they will come down hard on spoilers posted on their site:

Posting to discuss, request, or link to information or campaign spoilers from illegitimately obtained sources – including illegitimately obtained copies of Halo: Reach – before the game is officially released will be considered a leak and will be treated as such.