Leaked Version of Deus Ex Used in Marketing Research

An anti-piracy organization came across a leaked version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and they came up with a cunning plan of using it in an experimental survey that might help the industry.

TorrentFreak followed the whole story and learned that Vigilant Defender representatives found in this leak the opportunity they were waiting for.

They took the Beta version, altered it and re-uploaded it to a popular torrent site. Much to the surprise of the million people who've downloaded the game, after playing a couple of levels, they were ejected from the game and found themselves faced with a website that contained all sorts of questions.

They were asked why they downloaded illegally, what were their favorite torrent sites and even more detailed things about services provided by Ubisoft and EA.

Some of the results were comforting for the industry as nearly a quarter of the respondents had already ordered the game in advance, while in average they answered that they'd pay $28 (20 EUR) for a copy of the game.

“Our intention was not to upset illegal downloaders, and we did hold back on the amount of images we created, uploaded, and to what sites we were on,” James Grimshaw, founder of Vigilant Defender, told TorrentFreak.

“We love downloaders just as much as we love PC Games, but there has to come a time when you realize that the balance is no longer there, we just want to restore balance. Hopefully that will be enough to bring publishers back, to take more risks on the PC instead of shying away.”

Grimshaw states that he is well aware that their little experiment might have hurt a couple of companies, including Eidos and Square Enix, but he hopes that those involved will understand their deeds.

This highlights the thin line that exist between legal and illegal when it comes to copyrighted digital content, but remember that this experiment was somehow useful and you should always purchase the games from authorized vendors to avoid any unpleasant incidents.