Ubisoft sues over PC Assassin's Creed pirate leak

Posted Aug 7th 2008 9:30AM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz, Action

It's hard enough that PC games get pirated and are made available over the Internet after the game ships. It's even harder when a publisher has to deal with a leak that happens before the game is released. One example is the PC port of Ubisoft's action game Assassin's Creed which was made available on pirate locations on the Internet several weeks before its planned April 2008 release.

Now Gamespot reports that Ubisoft is going after a company that it claims helped to release that leaked version of the game. The story states that Ubisoft is suing Charlotte, NC based Optical Experts Manufacturing who was in charge of duplicating the game on PC disk for shipment to stores. Apparently one of their employees managed to gain access to the game and made the port available on the Internet. Ubisoft states this was in violation of OEM's own security measures. According to Ubisoft that pirate leak was downloaded 700,000 times which cost Ubisoft millions of dollars in sales. So far OEM has yet to comment on the lawsuit.

Tags: assassins-creed, ubisoft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Just further proves how useless CD checks and DRM can be. If this is true, the game got leaked before any of that was even installed.Posted at 9:41AM on Aug 7th 2008 by Steven Wong

I say good. I'm sure that the company being sued didn't directly or purposely contribute to the game being pirated but their lax security measures and poor employee screening apparently did. More needs to be done to fight these slime ball pirates directly. As a legit consumer I'm sick and tired of DRM and these alternative revenue models impairing my enjoyment of my game because these cheap-ass leaches think they are so clever for stealing and distributing other peoples hard work. F*ck em. String them up by their toes and let me get back to enjoying my legit software.

...bysmittyPosted at 10:38AM on Aug 7th 2008 by bysmitty

Steven, though I agree with your sentiments, you can't just expect these companies to do nothing while people steal their products at will. I've been in my current band for 7 years now. We make $30 + a few free drinks a gig if we're lucky and as the bill for our 2nd CD has already climbed over $2k, I can very much sympathize with the plight these companies are in. It would be absolutely heartbreaking for our music to wind up freely transferred around the internet before our loyal fans have a chance to get their proper CDs in their players. If that were to happen to us, I would do everything in my power to make sure the propagators of such an action are held accountable. I hate CD checks and DRM as much as anyone, (probably more) but I also know that if nothing is done to prevent it, they are pretty much encouraging it. The end product would be more and more companies leaving PC gaming in favor of the consoles which has obviously already started. The Stardock approach only works in small doses and for games that appeal to the mature crowd that generally doesn't pirate to begin with. I don't have all the answers here but I know that something has to be done because we're slowly losing our hobby as we know it.

...bysmittyPosted at 10:54AM on Aug 7th 2008 by bysmitty

You can't really translate pirated downloads into lost sales...just because someone gives into the temptation of downloading software illegally for free doesn't mean that they would be making the trip to the store and shelling out $50 for it if it they couldn't pirate it. This is just a side note, I hate piracy and want it put to an end as much as anyone else.Posted at 11:00AM on Aug 7th 2008 by Mike

Of course you can translate pirated downloads into lost sales.
It doesn't matter that they didn't intend to pay $50 for a game.
They stole a game that did happen to cost money if they could steal it they most of known in some way it cost money.
Its like picking a game up off the store shelf taking it and then saying well I never intend to buy it. Just I Intend to steal it.
Piracy is bad but you can never just stop enforcing checks.
Thats like taking a camera out of a store because people decided to stop shoplifting.Posted at 11:20AM on Aug 7th 2008 by Jack

@Mike:

You really don't know what these people would do if they didn't have the option of getting a very popular and publicized game for free, with no consequence. 700,000 is a lot, by any stretch, and until someone can prove without a doubt that none of these individuals would have bought the game in the first place, this is going to continue to be an issue that hangs over the head of PC gaming.Posted at 11:27AM on Aug 7th 2008 by Darth Nader

Providing online distribution like Valve's Steam service would eliminate some of the major pirating that happens.
It's truly unfortunate that Optical Experts Manufacturing will pay dearly for one individuals negligence, not only in legal fees and damages, but more importantly in the company's reputation!
Just think, one stupid employee might have just bankrupt their company. Posted at 11:30AM on Aug 7th 2008 by Migraine

On the topic of lost sales, I agree that 1 download doesn't necessarily = $50 lost revenue but there IS some sort of cost there. Maybe they would have waited until it was cheaper, maybe they would have split the cost with a friend and shared it, or maybe they really would have paid full price. They spent the time and effort to download it so they likely would have spent some amount of money at some point on it. Anyway, I don't think that the exact amount of lost revenue is as important as the fact that there IS a substantial amount of lost revenue. Ubisoft spent millions developing a new IP for the ground up and the porting, testing, and extra content costs for the PC version couldn't have been nominal. When it comes time for AC2 or the next big Ubi game, we can only hope that they will look past that lost income and deliver a PC version. If piracy continues as it is though, we're going to see more and more companies that won't look past it and skip the PC altogether.

...bysmittyPosted at 11:58AM on Aug 7th 2008 by bysmitty

Typical company thinking that 700,000 pirated copies = 700,000 copies that weren't sold "Costing" them money they never made in the first place.
Lost Sales is such a made up figure it's stupid to think that any of the people that stole the game online would have bought it outright in the first place.
They lost no sale and lost no money.Posted at 6:15PM on Aug 7th 2008 by zushiba