With the unfortunate prevalence of piracy in the gaming world today there are numerous titles that get leaked before their intended release date. Just such a leak hit Gears of War 3 recently, with an early build of the game's single player hitting torrent sites across the internet.

Usually these kinds of leaks occur a couple of weeks or days before a game's release, but Gears of War 3 is only scheduled for a September release, making the damage all the more palpable.

According to IGN, the leak consists of an early build of the game's single player campaign, but doesn't represent the end product. Nevertheless, players of the leaked version have taken to YouTube, posting all manner of spoilers regarding the campaign and storyline.

“We have seen the reports of Gears of War 3 content being propped on the Web and working closely with our security teams and law enforcement to address the situation,” publishers Microsoft told IGN.

“The content is not from a final build and is not representative of what fans will enjoy when the game launches.”

This isn't the first that a major Microsoft release has been leaked before release, with code from last year's Halo: Reach also hitting the web before its intended time. And while the source of the leak is still unknown, the leaking of internal code has to point either to an inside job or a hacking attack, and no reports of the latter has yet surfaced.