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Sega Cancels Yakuza 6 Song of Life Free Demo After Gamers Unlocked Full Game (businessinsider.com)

Posted by msmash on from the oops dept.

Sega pulled the highly anticipated "Yakuza 6: The Song of Life" demo this week from the PlayStation Store after discovering some players had inadvertently gained access to the full game using the demo. From a report: This discovery came only hours after the demo was initially released for PlayStation 4. The Japanese video game company tweeted, "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." [...] When the demo was initially released it required more than 36 GB of storage, to the surprise of many video game critics. Kotaku, an online entertainment publication, suggests that the demo was so large because it actually contained the entire game, but was supposed to restrict everything beyond the first few stages of the game.

24 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Return to the Shareware format by Quakeulf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It worked in the past, it could possibly work again if you tried it.

    1. Re:Return to the Shareware format by TWX · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have some rather fond memories of a summer computer repair course that the school district paid-for that recruited a couple of us from each high school to attend. The class itself was mostly meaningless when it came to the hands-on part as we all had a lot of personal experience already, so on the first day when we realized the trainer computers had NE2000-compatible ethernet cards, at lunch we went to one guy's house for Quake Test, and to my house for T-connectors, BNC cable, terminators, and TSRs for the NICs, and we networked the computers and played the demo of quake (without sound) for the duration of the hands-on portion of the class.

      id was fairly smart, they probably made more sales because of how widely shared and eventually how widely pirated their games were since that distribution made their titles known. Everyone wanted to play Quake because so many people were already playing it.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  2. Basically that by DrYak · · Score: 1

    That's basically what they tried to do.

    But they fucked up because the "free shareware episode" here already contains the data for the extra "commercial episodes" and only a small switch gets flipped to enable continuing.

    (Whereas, you got extra floppies with Commander Keen episode 2 and 3, or Wolfenstein Episodes 2 to 6, once you paid after testing the free shareware episode 1).

    (Though I've read somewhere that Id *DID* make the same blunder with the shareware CD of Quake1. There was only a simple registration procedure that was supposed to unlock the full commercial game with extra episodes out of the shareware CD, the same way here the full Yakuza6 can apparently be unlocked out of free 36GB demo).

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Basically that by pak9rabid · · Score: 3, Informative

      (Though I've read somewhere that Id *DID* make the same blunder with the shareware CD of Quake1. There was only a simple registration procedure that was supposed to unlock the full commercial game with extra episodes out of the shareware CD, the same way here the full Yakuza6 can apparently be unlocked out of free 36GB demo).

      You read correct. The Quake I shareware CD not only contained the full version of Quake, but also full versions of the entire id FPS library at the time (Doom, Doom II, Heretic, and I think even Hexen), all made available for free by using a little utility called 'qcrack'. Man, discovering that was like discovering plutonium for 14 year old me.

    2. Re:Basically that by pak9rabid · · Score: 1

      It's true. In addition to the full version of Quake, you could also get full versions of Doom, Doom II, Heretic, and I think even Hexen. I exploited the shit out of that.

    3. Re:Basically that by Mahldcat · · Score: 1

      Scary thing is I still have that CD laying around somewhere....buddies of mine and I all rushed to purchase it as soon as we heard about it....

    4. Re:Basically that by burningcpu · · Score: 1

      Yup! I have the gothic looking CD case it came in, as well. Ahh, here's a picture of the glory:

      https://www.quaddicted.com/_me...

    5. Re:Basically that by ThurstonMoore · · Score: 1

      I have the shareware Quake CD and QCrack on a floppy still. The CD contained the whole game and also Doom, Doom 2 and Ultimate Doom which could all be unlocked with QCrack.

    6. Re:Basically that by PmanAce · · Score: 1

      Ah Heretic and Hexen, I loved those games!

      --
      Tired of my customary (Score:1)
  3. Game company gets what it deserves... by Dracolytch · · Score: 1

    ... after being lazy and wasteful of other peoples' resources (time, bandwidth, storage space).

    I've made game demos before. It's not exactly rocket science. Heck, many entry-level game engines (Unity) have, as part of the build process, a way for you to select what levels you want for a given build so that it creates output with the appropriate size & content (and nothing more).

    --
    This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
  4. Lazy developers? by mark-t · · Score: 2

    If it was supposed to be a demo version, then what the fuck was the full version doing there?

    I get that you want to build them both from the same codebase, but that's what #ifdef is for.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:Lazy developers? by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      You don't even need #ifdefs:

      if(NextLevelDataIsNotPresent)
      {
              MessageBox("Hope you enjoyed the demo. For more levels, buy our game!");
              GoBackToDemoMainScreen();
      }
      else
      {
              LoadNextLevelAndContinue();
      }

      Aside from that, I'm not downloading almost 40 gigs of data for a fricking demo. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    2. Re:Lazy developers? by mark-t · · Score: 1

      Well, they could also not bundle data that was not supposed to be part of the demo with the demo version.... that would reduce size as well. Probably even more than #ifdef's... the point of them being primary to ensure that the program does not misbehave when otherwise expected data will not be present.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    3. Re:Lazy developers? by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      No, the pseudo-code I posted takes two different paths depending on whether the assets are present. You can't use data that isn't there to begin with, even if the code to use it is there. As a bonus, you don't make prospective customers spend a ton of time downloading data they're not supposed to be using anyway.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    4. Re:Lazy developers? by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      I suspect they wanted to be able to just offer an unlock code, that allows access to the rest of the game.

    5. Re:Lazy developers? by bickerdyke · · Score: 1

      That's how you used to do that: Add precompiler macros (#ifdef) to your your ressource compiler source file.

      --
      bickerdyke
  5. par for the course by nimbius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    from the company that once knowingly and intentionally installed a spyware trojan on their customers computers.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  6. Wow, that's lazy... by Ecuador · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a technical app on the app store (telescope polar alignment), with a free version missing some extra tools and a paid version. I make sure I keep it light in case someone needs to download it from a remote location and, even though both are built from the same project, I make sure the extra stuff is not included in the free package, so that it is 10MB instead of 20MB...
    But just throwing the entire 3GB game as a demo, that sure is lazy! An since they are that lazy, the were predictably lazy with the way they implemented the limitation so people got around it. Congrats.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  7. Quake & qcrack by pak9rabid · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of the glory days of the Quake I demo CD & qcrack. Man, what a goldmine that was.

  8. Who are they upset at? by wardrich86 · · Score: 1

    They have nobody to blame but themselves... why punish the gaming community for their fuck up? If you're going to release a demo, release a fucking demo... not a locked up version of the full game. The fact that they DIDN'T see this coming is the most alarming part of it all.

    1. Re:Who are they upset at? by meerling · · Score: 1

      I agree completely with that.
      Company got lazy, screwed up, tried half assed damage control, pissed off fans.
      And to top it all off, the company says it's mad too...
      "We are as upset as you are, and had hoped to have this demo available for everyone today."
      The company should be apologizing, not implying there is someone else for them to blame. Companies are never "mad" at themselves after all.

    2. Re:Who are they upset at? by rot16 · · Score: 1

      Or they made a nice publicity stunt. Would you have heard of the game otherwise?

  9. Jump by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    Those quadded red armor rocket jumps can be a bitch.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  10. BWAHAHA by XSportSeeker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "We discovered that some were able to use the demo to unlock the full game."

    Nope. According to people who got full access to the game, they didn't have to do anything to unlock the game... it was already unlocked. They just kept playing it past the demo part.