A group of Italians have become the targets in a lawsuit filed from game publisher Square Enix. The Patent Arcade web site reports that the company has accused the group of taking a development build of its upcoming cyberpunk themed action RPG Deus Ex Human Revolution and then leaking that build onto various Internet pirate web sites.
The preview build for the game was released to those pirate sites last May, before E3 2011. Square Enix stated that the 15 people named in the lawsuit got their hands on the preview build by accessing the server of an Italian gaming magazine called GMC. The magazine itself is not named nor blamed by Square Enix in its lawsuit as the server was accessed by an outside IP address. The company is seeking damages "in excess of $5000" from the defendants. Earlier this year the game"s official web site was hacked with a number of email addresses taken as a result. The two events do not seem to be related.
Developed for the past several years by Eidos Montreal, Deus Ex Human Revolution will be the third game in the series (the first two were developed by the now defunct Ion Storm). The PC version of the game will have support for Valve"s Steamworks as well as support for DirectX 11 graphical features. The system requirements for the PC port have already been released. The game is slated to be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms on on August 23.