Ubisoft Sues Over Assassin's Creed Piracy
Category: GamingPosted: August 7, 2008 11:09AM
Author: ClayMeow
Piracy is an ongoing problem in almost every industry nowadays, not the least of all, the gaming industry. According to Ubisoft, after Assassin's Creed was leaked six weeks early, the pirated version was downloaded over 700,000 times, costing it millions of dollars. But instead of going after those that downloaded the game, Ubisoft is doing the smart thing and going against the company responsible for the leak. Optical Experts Manufacturing (OEM) was contracted by Ubisoft to reproduce copies of the game disc, and Ubisoft set strict security procedures OEM had to follow. OEM ignored these secruity procedures and allowed an employee to bring a disc home, ultimately resulting in the employee uploading it to the web. Ubisoft claims it tracked the earliest iterations of the pirated game to the home of an OEM employee, and after an investigation, an OEM-manufactured copy of the game was actually found in the employee's home. Furthermore, Ubisoft claims that OEM admitted to ignoring the security commitments. Not only did this result in a direct loss of sales from those who downloaded the pirated version, but it also destroyed the published reputation because of an intentional bug it included to crash the game partway through for security reasons. People that reviewed the game based on this pirated version were very negative, causing confusion among prospective buyers. Personally, I think this is the type of suit that is needed. Going after the ones that download the game accomplishes nothing. Hurt the source, and it may disuade others from trying to leak a game in the future.
