Hours of The Crew Motorfest gameplay footage leaks online

Extensive gameplay of Ubisoft’s open-world racer The Crew Motorfest has appeared online just a week ahead of its planned appearance at the publisher’s Ubisoft Forward showcase.

Ubisoft unveiled The Crew Motorfest for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC back in January with a 49-second trailer featuring a handful of “in-engine” cinematics. It’s a live-service game themed around a “one-of-a-kind” motoring festival, promising “tailor-made races, themed events, and other unique challenges”, all taking place on the scenic Hawaiian island of O’ahu.

Since that official announcement, Ubisoft has hosted several “insider programme” closed testing sessions for registered players, with the fourth phase currently underway. It’s this latest closed test that appears to have generated the spate of new gameplay videos Ubisoft is currently playing copyright-strike whack-a-mole with online.

Over the weekend, a 25-minute gameplay video was uploaded to YouTube, quickly followed by a considerably heftier leak offering over two hours of footage. Ubisoft has now successfully removed these two leaks, but written gameplay details – pointing to the likes of improved handling, a Forza-Horizon-style rewind feature, the return of boats and planes, and more – and at least one mirror of the footage remains available via file sharing websites.

All this comes just a week ahead of the Ubisoft Forward showcase, which is already confirmed to feature a fresh look at The Crew Motorfest, alongside more on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and a mystery game – reported to be Massive’s new open-world Star Wars game.

Ubisoft Forward takes place next Monday, 12th June, at 6pm BST/10am PDT. You’ll find it, and and everything else so-far confirmed for this year’s Summer Game Fest in Eurogamer’s guide.