With just over a week before its official launch in the U.S., DICE's highly anticipated PC version of Battlefield 3 has reportedly made its way to various torrent sites. Gaming website Dark Side of Gaming says the download is 9.96GB in size and offers a fully playable version of the shooter's single player campaign.
There are no reports of console versions being leaked at this time. Also, those with pirated copies won't be able to access the game's multiplayer portion – which is the real meat and potatoes of the Battlefield series – as that requires a valid Origin account. Still, though the effect on sales might be limited, the leak will certainly upset DICE and game developers in general, as it seems it's no longer a question of if a triple A PC title will be leaked but a question of when.
Battlefield 3 is set to launch for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on October 25 in the U.S. and October 28 across Europe. Earlier today, DICE revealed the nine multiplayer maps that will ship with Battlefield 3 at launch. Details and design insights for each of them are available at the official Battlefield blog.
On the PC the game will handle up to 64 players and will take advantage of the latest computer hardware with support for DirectX 11 and 64-bit processors. As such the recommended system specifications are notably high. Be sure to check our Battlefield 3 Beta GPU & CPU Performance Test and get the latest graphics drivers from both AMD and Nvidia.