Love them or hate them, leaks are an inevitability of any public-facing industry. Fans naturally want to know about upcoming releases for games, films and other entertainment, to the extent that some pursue any chance to get a scoop earlier than intended. Magic: The Gathering creator Wizards of the Coast is all too familiar with that arguably overzealous eagerness, with upcoming set releases often getting leaked online ahead of time, either by retailers selling product early or, as has recently turned out to be the case, theft.
For those that missed it, an individual going by the moniker NoUsernamePls has recently been uploading images containing cards from next month’s Commander Legends expansion online. The packs, which aren’t meant to be officially available until November, were part of an eBay auction, and the MTG AminoApps user had little reason to believe they were obtained illegally.
In a statement released earlier this week, however, NoUsernamePls describes how they’ve since returned the packs and their contents to Wizards of the Coast after it emerged that the stock in question had been stolen. Despite this, though, they believe that the act of revealing cards early simply amounts to free advertising for Wizards. Speaking to ManaEcho, they said:
In my opinion, I provided some info to help hype people up without spoiling so much that the season is ruined. If people disagree with me, that’s totally fine, and they’re entitled to their opinion. I tried to keep each post headed with a spoiler-free picture in case anyone wanted to go into the set blind, and there wasn’t much else I could’ve done.
While NoUsernamePls estimates that what they’ve shown represents around just a quarter of Commander Legends‘ entire card pool, it remains to be seen if Wizards will adjust its own preview plans to accommodate the leaks. There’s a good chance, for example, that the company could end up spoiling cards that some fans have already known about for weeks, somewhat souring the experience for all involved.
Whatever the case, Magic: The Gathering lead designer Mark Rosewater confirmed earlier today that official previews for Commander Legends are due to kick off next week, October 26th. See here for the full story.