The head of Sonic Team has shared his views on the leaking of game content, saying it has the potential to ruin licensing deals.

Just days before Summer Game Fest, a number of leaks of apparent Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds footage was anppeared online, seemingly confirming characters that had yet to be announced.

During the Summer Game Fest show, Sega then announced that Hatsune Miku and characters from Like a Dragon and Persona would be in the game, as well as Minecraft characters and a Minecraft stage (the latter of which was part of the leaks).

In an interview with VGC to be published in its entirety soon, we asked Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka how the team felt about these leaks.

Choosing not to comment specifically on the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds leaks, Iizuka instead gave his views on leaking in general.

“This is just a general response, not anything specific to this game, but from a publishing perspective the publisher is always trying to control, plan, organise and present information and surprises to people to have the most fun, and get the most attention, [and] get people as excited as best as possible,” he explained (via a translator).

“And a lot of the people who leak this information are ruining that experience. They’re ruining the plans that people have put into place.

“In the event that you’re dealing with licensed content, sometimes that leak will destroy a deal, and now you can’t do some stuff because someone leaked something.

“We realise a lot of people really, really want to know immediately all this great, cool, fun stuff. But ultimately when people leak they’re ruining the plans and potentially ruining the content, and we’d really like people to think about that and maybe not do this kind of negative stuff so much.”

During Summer Game Fest it was confirmed that as well as characters from the Sonic universe, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will also include vocaloid character Hatsune Miku, Like a Dragon’s Ichiban Kasuga and Joker from the Persona series as playable characters.

Sega also confirmed that the game will be released on September 25 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC.

A Switch 2 version of the game has also been confirmed. This will be released at a later date, but Sega says a paid upgrade path will be available for players who buy the Switch version.