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Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link may have been cancelled, but that hasn’t stopped footage of Keyblade-wielding astronauts from leaking online
Footage from the cancelled mobile game Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link has leaked online, more than a year after Square Enix ended its development. The clip, shared on X, appears to show the game's cinematic intro featuring astronaut-like characters wielding Keyblades who battle a giant Heartless using jetpacks, offering a rare glimpse of a project that had otherwise remained largely a mystery.
Missing-Link began development in 2022 and was intended to bridge the Kingdom Hearts timeline between Union X and Dark Road, exploring the little-known "blank era" of the series' lore. It was cancelled last year after developers concluded it would be difficult to sustain a satisfactory long-term live service, with Square Enix's attention since shifting entirely to Kingdom Hearts 4, which recently received a Switch 2 announcement trailer at a June Nintendo Direct.
In short
- Leaked footage shows cancelled Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link's cinematic intro online.
- Mobile game, in development since 2022, was cancelled in 2025.
- Square Enix now focuses solely on Kingdom Hearts 4.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The leaked footage represents an important part of gaming history and cultural heritage that deserves preservation and documentation. Since Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link was already cancelled with no planned release, sharing the footage causes no commercial harm to Square Enix whilst allowing appreciation of the developers' creative vision and creating a permanent record of their work. Game preservation advocates argue that cancelled projects shouldn't simply vanish—documenting them enriches our understanding of how games develop and honours the creative effort invested, even when projects ultimately fail commercially.
The case against
Square Enix owns this intellectual property and made a deliberate choice to cancel the game and withhold it from release—a decision that warrants respect regardless of fan sentiment. Distributing copyrighted material without authorisation, even for cancelled projects, undermines the intellectual property protections that creators depend upon for control over their own work. The company has chosen not to release this unfinished material to the public, and honouring that choice means treating the leaked footage as unauthorised rather than celebrating it as a cultural contribution to gaming history.
Explained simply
Kingdom Hearts is a long-running video game series that blends Disney film characters and worlds with original storylines in a Japanese role-playing game format. The franchise has developed an intricate timeline spanning multiple games across different platforms, with players wielding magical weapons called Keyblades to battle dark forces.
Missing-Link was a mobile game in development that was designed to fill a significant gap in the series' complex story, exploring an unexplained period in Kingdom Hearts lore and connecting events between two earlier games. The studio behind the franchise, Square Enix, had revealed relatively little publicly about what the game would contain before halting its development.
The project was cancelled last year after developers determined it would be difficult to sustain as a live service—a game model requiring regular updates and ongoing player engagement to remain profitable. The cancellation meant that much of what was created for Missing-Link would likely never be seen by players.