According to this gamespot article, Ubisoft decided to get smart and do what they could do the fight piracy at the root of the problem, the duplicators:
Ubisoft says it included a bug in the pre-release Assassin’s Creed for security reasons that would cause the game to crash partway through. The bug was supposedly removed from the retail edition, but a mix of negative reviews of the leaked and bug-equipped pirated version of the game and legitimate reviews of the retail edition created customer confusion and caused "irreparable harm" to its reputation, Ubisoft said.
Reading up some more on it on qt3, it sounds like the sequence of events went something like this:
- Ubisoft knew their game was going to get pirated, but instead of resorting to some draconian method of copy protection, they released an early build (as is the normal QA process) to duplicators with a watermark/bug/landmine in it (not a normal QA process).
- Then, the duplicator did as Ubisoft expected and didn’t follow the requested and contracted security requirements and an employee at their company put the game on the internet.
- You can guess what happened next. The person and the company were tracked down since they could easily track what version came from where and how.
- The result is that Ubisoft is suing the compay for both the leaked copy AND the reputation hit they took when pirates and the like spread the word that Assassin’s Creed was broken because of the watermark/bug/landmine they purposely put in the code.
Long story short, Ubi is suing the duplicator, er dumbasses, not only for letting their early build get out in the open and having the code reach the internet a full six weeks early, but also for extra damage done to the perception of Ubi and the game when it crashed unexpectedly (well, unexpectedly to everyone but Ubi).
My question is this, since IANAL, can Ubisoft put something in the code that damages their reputation if it released into the wild (as they expect it to be, or they wouldn’t have put it there) and then, when it’s released (obviously putting the duplicator in breach of contract), blame the duplicator doubly so?
That seems iffy to me. Maybe it’s perfectly normal in legal land, could be so. Hell, if it is that’s a doubly good move by Ubi. They not only got the duplicator on breach of contract, they got them extra because they added a land mine in that you only found if you didn’t do your job right.
What Would Matt Do: Were I duplicator, I’d be shitting in my pants right now. At the very least, they are going to be out for the original breach of contract, at the worst, they are going to get charged double because of it. Were I Ubisoft, I’d be patting myself on the back. As myself, I’m giving a hearty "fuck yeah!" to Ubisoft. Way to take care of business good sirs.
3 Comments
Did’nt ID Software use the same type of security measure in Doom3? I think I remember something about contractor version being leaked during the final build stages. And if memory serves, it was a video card vendor who had an employee leak the game. I dont think I heard about any legal recourse that was taken by ID, but I’ll bet some heads rolled in the process.
I don’t remember that, but that’s pretty interesting. As I said above, I really like that Ubisoft is trying to plug leaks in the process, that’s good for the entire industry. I hope more companies take this approach.
Here’s a link I found that pretty much explains what happened with the Doom3 Alpha.
http://evem.org.au/evem/archives/games/doom_3_alpha_leaked_by_ati.html
So yeah..Id was using watermarks way back in 2003.