Full Yakuza 6 Game Accidentally Released As Demo

Fans of the Yakuza series have been eagerly awaiting Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, so when Sega released the demo to the PlayStation 4 today, players flocked to it. Unfortunately for Sega, it was quickly discovered that gamers were able to access the entire game, forcing Sega to remove the demo from the North American PlayStation Store.

Gamers were surprised to discover that the Yakuza 6 demo clocked in at over 30 gigabytes, putting it at closer to the size of a full game than a demo. It didn’t take players long to figure out why: rather than simply uploading Yakuza 6’s prologue to the PlayStation Store, Sega apparently uploaded an entire game, or at least a large portion of it. Gamers discovered that instead of the game simply ending after the prologue, it would continue along without any limitations, even netting trophies in the process. When the discovery reached Sega, Sega made the decision to pull the title from the PlayStation Network.

It’s unclear at this time exactly how this mistake happened. At the time of this writing, other English-speaking territories still have access to the demo, so it seems that this was a mistake made exclusively on the North American PlayStation Store. Sega presumably intended for demo players to be able to pay to access the entirety of the game following its release, but that paywall was evidently absent in the North American demo. It remains to be seen if players who proceeded further than they should will be able to continue those saves once the finished game is released.

Sega has not yet announced when the Yakuza 6 demo will return, so players who missed out on it will have to sit tight for now. Yakuza fans are fairly patient, however, as English speakers have been waiting for Yakuza 6 for over a year now following its Japanese release. Following the English release date’s delay from March to April, at least this blunder indicates that the game is basically complete, so fans shouldn’t expect further delays.

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life will release exclusively for PS4 on April 17th.