Early copies of Final Fantasy XV are out there. They’ve been out in the wild for a few days now, in fact, and with them spoilers have started to run rampant online. Square Enix is aware of the situation of course – they’ve been pulling down streams left and right but the information still persists.

To that end, director Hajime Tabata had a few words to say during the game’s launch event in London today. Namely, he asks fans to avoid spreading spoilers and says Square Enix may be looking into potential legal action to stop them from spreading further. Here’s what he had to say:

“We’re finally only one week from the release of the game, and all the development staff… we have this feeling of nervousness but we’re really excited about it and we want to be able to celebrate the release of the game alongside all of the fans out there when it finally comes out next week.

“Unfortunately there are a few things that are starting to rain on our parade, and it’s a very sad thing to say. This is mainly in Japan – really – but there are some people that may have acquired the game irregularly before the release date and are spreading spoilers across the internet.

“In Japanese we call it netabare (ネタバレ) and in English you call them spoilers – and they’re really coming out. They’re spoiling the fun for a lot of people who have been looking forward to Final Fantasy XV for such a long time. it’s causing a lot of worry for people involved in the sales of the game and in the production too. I’d really like to apologize about the fact that these kinds of problems are happening. It’s just a very sad state of affairs.

“We’re currently looking into whether this kind of activities of spreading spoilers across the internet does legally constitute an obstruction of our business or not, and if it’s found out that it does then we’ll take legal measures to stop this being posted and take it down. We apologize for all the problems caused and all the worries, but we are taking solid steps to address this. It’s just not fair to spoil their fun of the people who have been waiting for such a long time, so please stop that right now.”