Ubisoft Sues Disc Manufacturer Over Assassin's Creed Leak

Ubisoft has taken a bit of a novel approach to the problem of piracy by suing the company it contracted to duplicate the Assassin's Creed game disc.

A report on GameSpot says Ubisoft launched a suit against Optical Experts Manufacturing of Charlotte, North Carolina, alleging "an extraordinary breach of trust and gross negligence" which resulted in an employee posting a copy of Assassin's Creed online six weeks before it hit the shelves. Although a number of security measures were designed to ensure such a thing didn't happen, Ubisoft claims the company failed to properly implement them, which ultimately caused the leak. The suit was filed after Ubisoft tracked pirated copies of the game to the home of an Optical Experts Manufacturing employee, and later found a copy of the game, manufactured by OEM, at the employee's home.

NPD Group numbers indicate the PC version of Assassin's Creed sold over 40,000 copies in the U.S. as of the end of June, while Ubisoft claims pirated copies of the game was downloaded more than 700,000 times, adding up to millions of dollars in losses. Further, a security bug included in pre-release versions of the game that causes crashes during play resulted in negative feedback toward the game, which led to consumer confusion and "irreparable harm" to Ubisoft's reputation, the company said.

Ubisoft is seeking $10 million in damages and legal fees each over charges of negligence and breach of contract, and is also suing for copyright infringement.

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Perhaps that's why De-Rez is destroying them all?

De-Rez is destroying them all because Yahtzee said to.

This is a major issue, OEM did cause considerable financial damage to Ubisoft through this negligence, and I am fairly certain that they will lose this lawsuit, the game wouldn't have received any better reviews and there still would have been thousands of pirated software downloads. But this leak resulted in zero lines on AC's release date.

Some people who bought AC through retail had to pirate/crack the disc because the DRM actually made it unplayable

It's funny, never seen a developer actually go down to the source and sue the hell out of them lol.

Still I think that the numbers are way over-exaggurated, especially the sales - but hey I wasn't there so what the hell do I know?

Still their support for PC games is practically a joke, this shouldn't surprise them - but now I expect ridiculous DRM for Far Cry 2.

"$10 million in damages"? Uh, Crysis' budget was 27 million and it's one of the most expensive games ever. I don't know AC's budget, but that could be over half of it.

Kind of interesting to hear that their own security bug, designed to hamper pirates, ended up damaging the image of the game. That's a hell of a back fire there.

"...and "irreparable harm" to Ubisoft's reputation..."
I wasn't aware that Ubisoft had a good reputation to begin with.
Their lack of support for Dark Messiah was the final nail in the coffin for me.

I bought Assassin's creed at launch from Steam. Good game, but I almost didn't buy it because of the negative feedback I was reading a lot about on the forums.
I love the graphics and gameplay. I just wish the sub missions between each assassination would have been better.

Anyway, I have no regrets. and eagerly await Assassin's Creed 2.

I hope Ubisoft wins their lawsuit.

As usual the facts that ac is an action game that like all action games will inherently sell better on consoles then on pc, market saturation because of a long wait between the console, the pc version and ubisoft's draconian drm that exclusively damages paying costumers and the lacklustre feedback after the console release are completely ignored in favor of piracy.

Atleast 2 of those pirated copies are mine because the legal one i have here doesn't work on either of my computers.