Last month, Sega announced that it would delay Yakuza 6: The Song of Life for a little under a month, but promised fans a demo that they could use to get a quick taste of the game before then.
Well, that day came yesterday; and while everything went off without a hitch in other regions, Sega messed up spectacularly in North America and accidentally released the entirety of Yakuza 6 for free instead of the promised demo.
At face value, the demo and the full game look exactly the same, as they are both a 30GB download. The purpose of this was for players to be able to download the demo and hold on to various things the player unlocked during that time (story progression, character skills, trophies, etc.) once the full game arrives.
Of course, there wasn’t supposed to be that much players would be able to unlock. Many of the game’s content was inaccessible and players were only supposed to complete the prologue.
However, this isn’t how things panned out.
Instead, for whatever reason, some players found themselves able to progress well past the prologue (up to Little Asia) and into Chapter 3, making it abundantly clear that someone made a tremendous error.
Fortunately for Sega, it was quick to realize what was going on and pulled the demo from the North American PlayStation Store and detailed the situation on Twitter, saying:
We apologize, but have had to remove the Yakuza 6: The Song of Life demo from the PlayStation Store. We are as upset as you are, and had hoped to have this demo available for everyone today. We discovered that some were able to use the demo to unlock the full game. We’re looking into the nature of the issue. Thank you for your patience.
Needless to say, this isn’t a good situation Sega has found itself in — especially considering that Yakuza has quickly turned from one of Sega’s most obscure titles in the West, to one of its most-anticipated. Now, rather than having the excitement build up in anticipation for April, there are quite a few people who have the full game over a month in the advance and it’s likely some will be rather loose-lipped about it.
From here on, it will be interesting to see what Sega plans to do. But what can it do, really? Can Sega lock players out of the demo if they made it past the prologue or will it release the game in full so everyone is up to par?
Other than for a lucky few, Yakuza 6 will be out on April 17 in North America.
