GTA 6 isn't the only upcoming video game that has suffered from extreme leakage in 2026. While the spotlight is undoubtedly on Rockstar Games right now – the publisher has thus far been unable to stop a hacker from revealing aspects of an old build to the public without authorization – it's worth remembering that 4A Games went through something similar earlier this year.
Shortly before Metro 2039 was revealed to the world, a bold return to the Moscow Metro system, a playable build of a canceled Metro game found its way onto the internet. While the source remains unclear, the leak put a lot of 4A's early work on a sequel to Metro Exodus out into the public sphere.
Speaking with Jon Bloch, the executive producer of Metro 2039 says that seeing work never intended to be seen by the world is a "strange" feeling that he'd rather not see repeated. "It never feels good. It can be frustrating to see."
The canceled Metro game shows that 4A once had a very different vision for how it would follow Exodus. The leaked material suggested that the studio was exploring a full open-world space, had aligned a story featuring differing protagonists, and a wildly different approach to customization and survival.
Work on this Metro sequel was abandoned in 2022, and the project was ultimately rebooted. 4A has explained that the Russian invasion of Ukraine (where the studio and much of its staff originated) necessitated a change in creative direction, and inspired the studio to tell a different type of story – Metro 2039 is the result of that work.
Still, Bloch assures me that seeing community reaction to work it once had in progress hasn't impacted development or the direction of Metro 2039, as frustrating as the leaks may have been. "I wouldn't say that it's affected the work that we're putting into what we're doing now. I mean, it's out there. It happened. There's nothing we can do about it. It sucks, but it could be worse. There's a lot of other things, frankly, that have gone on during the development of this game that I think are much worse."
The war in Ukraine has had an unimaginable impact on the people working to bring Metro 2039 to life. It's impossible to truly understand the strain the 4A Games team – working primarily out of its headquarters in Kyiv and a support studio in Malta – has been under over the past four years. In fact, having played the game myself, I find the quality of Metro 2039 undeniably astonishing.
Metro Exodus released in 2019 and Bloch admits that 4A "didn't set out for this game to take seven years" to create, but he does acknowledge that players will certainly see a benefit in the final product of Metro 2039. "We're benefiting from that time on the technology side, the gameplay side, and the feature side," he says. "The story had to be redone, and we did have to move on from some other location ideas that had fed the story we were working on before. But we tried to save as much of what had already been built as we could, and changed elements to meet the new story."
Bloch says that, ultimately, while a sequel to Metro Exodus may have been rebooted, the Metro 2039 you'll experience come February 2027 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X will ultimately have benefited from the "continued development, iteration, and polish" that was maintained across the entire process. And if what I've played so far is any indication, it's clear that 4A has something truly special on its hands.
