According to reports, illegitimate copies of as many as 35 retro games by ten different publishers were found among the extensions available for the Edge browser. The games discovered include the likes of Super Mario, Mario Kart, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Pac-Man, Tetris, Cut The Rope, along with Microsoft’s own popular game Minecraft.
The report adds that some reviews for these games date back to October, which implies they’ve been hiding in plain sight for quite a while. However, Microsoft started cracking down on these games and have managed to remove some of these extensions from Edge.
That said, sources also suggest that one of Microsoft’s accounts (@MSEDgeDev) ended up promoting some of the browser extensions themselves. The tweet, which has now been removed, read “Calling all Pac-Man, Tetris, and Mario Kart lovers. Did you know Microsoft Edge has these plus more vintage games on the extensions site?” followed by a link.
Some reports also suggest that several classic games can still be found on the Edge browser, despite Microsoft’s efforts to remove them. Both Nintendo and Microsoft have individually confirmed that they are looking into the issue. Neither party has officially released any of these games, thereby creating a conflict in piracy of content.
Downloading illegitimate copies of games over the Internet can be risky because hackers could tweak the official developer or publisher’s code with malicious intent. Notably, the report adds that some of these games had similar descriptions, which suggests all of them could have been published by the same person or group. In any case, it looks like Microsoft still has work to do when it comes to moderation of its Edge browser.
