007 First Light Iceland mission leaks on YouTube via physical copy days before launch

Update: The video has now been taken down by the uploader after a copyright strike from IO Interactive. The original article continues as below:

Three days ahead of its May 27 release date, 007 First Light's opening Iceland mission has been recorded and uploaded to YouTube by a user who obtained a physical PS5 copy early. The video (see below) is titled "007 First Light Part 1" and was uploaded by channel Gamingkurosh. It is a small account with around 510 subscribers, and was flagged on r/GamingLeaksAndRumours within the hour and has since attracted a fair amount of attention. 

The leak directly corroborates our past coverage. A previous leak of the PS5 disc had already revealed that only the first mission is playable without any mandatory downloads, and the uploader confirmed this via the game's main menu screen. That effectively made the Iceland opening mission the most leakable part of the entire game, with or without a day-one patch installed.

User feedback on the Reddit thread has been largely positive toward the game itself. Top-voted comments compare the game to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes for its moody atmosphere, and multiple users add that the environmental storytelling and writing quality seems very polished. One commenter said they were "sold" after being lukewarm on the trailers.

YouTube comments on the video pretty much reflect the same sentiment. One user pointed out that Bond does not have his gunbarrel sequence yet. His reasoning was that he has not yet "earned the number," which is a neat detail from the origin story. Comments calling for Part 2 are already appearing.

To be fair, this leak is coming through at a particularly sensitive moment for IO Interactive. As we reported earlier, review codes were only distributed to press on May 22nd — the same concern around piracy that previously motivated publishers like those behind Forza Horizon 6 and Subnautica 2 to restrict early access, only for Steam builds to surface anyway. Denuvo DRM was added to the PC version less than a week before launch, partly in response to these exact scenarios. The console version was always the more vulnerable vector, and that has now proven accurate.

IO Interactive has not issued a takedown of the video at time of writing, though given the standard industry response to pre-launch footage, that is likely a matter of time.

007: First Light's introduction mission (Iceland) leaked on Youtube
by u/ZamnBoii in GamingLeaksAndRumours