FTC denies blame for Xbox plans leaked in unredacted filing

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday said it wasn’t culpable for the leak of sensitive plans for gaming platform Xbox that were recently exposed in legal filings.

On Monday evening, documents related to Xbox were shared widely showing detailed timelines for future updated gaming consoles, controllers and more. First shared by Resetera, the documents were uploaded to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s website.

The documents were uploaded as part of the FTC’s lawsuit against Microsoft contesting its $68 billion acquisition of high-profile game developer Activision-Blizzard.

"The FTC was not responsible for uploading Microsoft's plans for its games and consoles to the court website," Douglas Farrar, FTC spokesperson, told Recorded Future News.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment, but the incident was the second data leak involving the company on Monday after it was revealed that Microsoft employees in June accidentally exposed 38 terabytes of data – including troves of private keys, passwords and internal Microsoft Teams messages from hundreds of employees.

The FTC and UK regulators have been locked in a contentious battle with Microsoft over the gaming acquisition. In July, a federal appeals court ruled in Microsoft’s favor and the two sides appeared to be moving toward a settlement.

The lawsuit was launched by the FTC in December amid concerns that the acquisition of the Call of Duty-maker would be unfair to other gaming platform manufacturers battling Microsoft’s Xbox.

The documents leaked on Monday evening show Microsoft’s plans for Xbox until 2030 – laying out the release timeline for their next console as well as more confidential emails about potential acquisitions of Nintendo, PC gaming giant Valve and other companies.