A demo version of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life released for the PlayStation 4 yesterday surprisingly included access to the entire game for many players, well before its official release outside of Japan. Sega has taken down the demo temporarily as it works to correct the issue.

The 30GB demo download for Yakuza 6 contained the data needed for the entire game, an apparent effort to let demo players easily and eventually upgrade to a full purchase without losing their early progress. But many demo players quickly discovered they could advance in the demo much farther than the intended Chapter 1 limit found in an earlier Japanese demo; players could even earn PSN trophies for their progress. That's despite the fact that Yakuza 6 isn't set to launch outside of Japan until April 17, following a recent delay.

Publisher Sega took the flawed demo down from the PlayStation Store in North America and EMEA markets within hours of the initial reports, and the company apologized on Twitter for the inconvenience. "We are as upset as you are, and had hoped to have this demo available for everyone today," the company wrote. "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."

On Reddit, a company spokesperson followed up to say Sega is "working with Sony to make sure that fans like yourself aren't punished for downloading a demo." Despite the glitch, Sega says "save files from the demo will still work with final copies of the game" and that the company is working to "make sure that you can play the game at launch worry free" if you downloaded the demo.

Players that downloaded the demo before its removal seem to still have access to the full game, according to online reports, and these players can still re-download the game without issue. Not a bad bit of serendipity for those that happened to catch the problem before it was corrected, though we'll see what effect (if any) it has on the game's eventual sales outside Japan.

The accidental release brings to mind 2000's Crash Bash, which was included as a demo in Spyro the Dragon 3. A simple button code in that demo unlocked access to almost every single level in the game via an apparent beta debug menu that was left inside the code.