Playground issues some context behind Forza Horizon 5 datamining

Datamining is nothing new in the world of PC gaming. It often leads to some interesting findings, particularly in the case of unused, and sometimes, unreleased data. Datamining, and its method of discovering what’s meant to be hidden, is the very action that sparked some dialogue surrounding Forza Horizon 5 and its future car roster. After some discoveries made my miners got posted around the net, Playground Games took a moment to add a bit of context to the matter. In short, the team has gotten on the defensive.

The company addressed the concerns in a brief post on the official Forza Support website. Playground squarely answers the question if any files containing the names of unreleased cars means that players should expect to gain access to them in the near future. Its response is an interesting one, with the team stating that due to “development [being an] ongoing process, and as such, things may appear in our game files that are not confirmed.” The answer then continues, stating that “you should not consider anything confirmed as coming to the game until we’ve shared the news on our official channels.”

The answer seems like an attempt to play down suspicions. According to Playground, vehicles unearthed in Forza Horizon 5‘s data aren’t real yet-to-be-revealed “secrets.” But rather mere data that can potentially be changed at any given time.

Deflection or wise advice?

At first glance this may come off as being a deflection, but Playground does bring up a pretty irrefutable point. The company has to negotiate licensing deals with manufacturers in order to bring vehicles into its games. It is for this reason why we’ve seen brands be featured in one release, and then disappear in the next. Take Tesla, for example. The Model S was featured in Forza Horizon 3 back in 2016, but neither that car nor any other Tesla vehicle has appeared in any of the three subsequent Forza releases to date.

This being said, Playground may be working on, or at least just experimenting with various vehicles behind-the-scenes for Forza Horizon 5, and deals could have already fallen through or other critical decisions could end up being made thus stopping further production. When looking at it through this lens, the studio’s word of caution for players to not get overly excited seems fair.

It’s a secret to everybody

But, of course, you’re still going to have the folks who believe otherwise. Some may assume that this is the company’s roundabout way of trying to squash rumors until it’s firmly ready to make official announcements. Considering that this sort of thing has happened before, and Playground has commonly addressed it like it is now, it is an interesting change of strategy.

Whichever answer is the real one, like the mystery files in question, we may never know how truly concrete they are. Even so, if there’s one thing that no entity can do is stop the internet from doing is one of its favorite pastimes: good, hearty, speculation.

Either way, the game will continue to receive regular car roster updates for the rest of its active shelf life. The announcements — whether spoiled by datamining or not — will surely continue to come to Forza Horizon 5.