Google Stadia accidentally leaked playable demo of Ubisoft Quebec’s Gods & Monsters

Ubisoft has confirmed that a playable demo of its Gods & Monsters game was leaked onto Google’s Stadia game streaming service.

On Thursday, the demo briefly appeared on the Stadia Store under the name of ‘Orpheus.’ While it has since been removed, various reddit users have shared gameplay footage from the demo.

A short video of Gods and Monsters gameplay! from r/Stadia

First unveiled at E3 2019, Gods & Monsters is Ubisoft Quebec’s follow-up to 2018’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey that is also set in an open-world Greece setting. However, as its name suggests, the game is intended to more prominently feature the fantastical deities and creatures from the Greek pantheon, which only played a small role in Odyssey.

Otherwise, no actual gameplay footage from Gods & Monsters had been officially revealed up until this point. Based on the leak, the game definitely seems to draw from Odyssey, as well as Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

That said, Ubisoft Quebec issued a statement to Eurogamer to stress that his footage is outdated, given how it does look rough around the edges.

“Our vision for the game formerly known as Gods & Monsters has evolved in surprising ways, which is common when developing exciting new worlds,” Ubisoft Quebec exec Marc-Alexis Cote told Eurogamer.

“This footage is from our E3 2019 demo, which was shown to select press last June and is now over one year old. Much has changed since then in terms of features, tone, art and character design, and even the name of the game. We are hard at work and very excited to finally show players what we have created at the end of summer.”

In a separate statement provided to Eurogamer, a Google spokesperson apologized for the leak, noting that it had “mistakenly made an E3 2019 demo version of Gods & Monsters from Ubisoft available on the Stadia store that was not intended for the public to play.” According to Google, “a few hundred gamers were able to play [the demo] for less than 30 minutes.” It’s unclear exactly how this leak happened, though.

Gods & Monsters was originally set to release in early 2020, although the game was pushed out of Ubisoft’s last fiscal year, which ended on March 31st, 2020. Now, the game is set to release anytime between now and March 31st, 2021.