Deus Ex: Human Revolution isn’t out until the end of August, but critical appraisals of the unfinished game have been pretty positive so far. Unfortunately, the ongoing previews process has resulted in the theft of early game code from a press account that had access to it. As a result, Square Enix has filed a court document targeting 15 currently unknown Italian citizens who are believed to be responsible, Patent Arcade reports (via Edge).
The preview code was made accessible via Steam to certain members of the gaming press. One of those, from Italian outlet GMC, has been identified as the source of the leak. Both the reporter and the publication are blameless however, as the IP address the preview code was downloaded to does not match up against anyone associated with GMC. Whoever stole the code then copied it and shared it on the Internet.
Square’s legal move is really just laying out the groundwork so that there’s already a turning set of legal wheels if one of the alleged thieves is caught and identified. It’s hard to say how the number 15 was arrived at, but the publisher will want them to make good on damages — a number said to be in excess of $5,000 — plus legal fees and an injunction against the defendants for copying and republishing.
