Ubisoft sues disc replication firm for Assassin’s Creed leak |
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BY Adam Sandberg August 7th, 2008 |
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Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed was officially released on the PC in April this year, but a pirated version was available for download two months earlier. Ubisoft are now pointing their assassin’s sword towards who they believe are accountable for the early release, namely their disc replication firm, North Carolina-based Optical Experts Manufacturing (OEM), whom they are now suing.
Ubisoft alleges that “an extraordinary breach of trust and gross negligence” on the part of OEM allowed one employee to take a copy of the game home. When Ubisoft later tracked the first connections to the pirated copy of the game, they found that the host was an OEM employee.
According to Ubisoft, over 700,000 copies were downloaded before the official release, but it’s not only for financial reasons they are filing the suit, they also claim that their reputation was damaged because of an intentional bug in the pirated copy. The bug, which caused the game to crash, caused confusion amongst the public, making them believe that the retail version was equally unstable. And so, Ubisoft are suing OEM for copyright infringement, breach of contract, and negligence, and are asking for no less than $10 million each for the breach of contract and negligence claims.
Mistakes on OEM’s behalf have been made - no doubt about it - but what is it that makes the Assassin’s Creed-case so different from others? This seems to be a way of setting an example, and if all goes Ubisoft’s way, it can be used as an important precedent in the future.
August 7th, 2008
at 6:27 pm
I understand why Ubisoft wants to file a lawsuit, but then their reputation sort of got damaged by this game anyway. It wasn’t able to live up to its hype in my personal opinion. 700k copies got downloaded, ouch, imagine the money that got lost there….
August 7th, 2008
at 11:28 pm
I just don’t see that a lot of the people who downloaded the game would’ve bought it if they had to wait until the release in April.. But yeah, it’s a loss alright.
August 8th, 2008
at 2:42 am
Ubisoft’s breach-of-trust lawsuit would surely fly, especially when it tracked the host to an OEM employee. I’m a bit skeptical, however, with the bit about OEM damaging the French publisher’s “reputation.”
Consider this: OEM is a disk replication firm, correct? Ubisoft handed over the PC version’s golden master copy to OEM, which in turn would be mass produced and delivered to store shelves for public consumption. How is this destroyed reputation OEM’s fault when it was Ubisoft who handed over a “finished” product with a major bug?
August 8th, 2008
at 5:38 am
FPSRantings:
It was said in the original article from GameSpot that “Ubisoft says that it included a bug in the prerelease Assassin’s Creed for security reasons that would cause the game to crash partway through. The bug was supposedly removed from the retail edition…”
Sounds a bit weird doesn’t it?
August 8th, 2008
at 5:04 pm
I downloaded the game, and I can’t stress this enough: the game crashes which totally sux!! Who cares about a lawsuit when they can’t even make a proper game!!
August 11th, 2008
at 11:54 pm
@Adam
Sounds like an excuse to me. That’s the built-in crap detector talking. ;) Publishers do not risk putting in a bug in the retail copy since not all its customers are capable of updating their games.
OEM screwed up, that’s for sure. However, it’s not responsible for the “damaged reputation” that Ubisoft never had in the first place.