Ubisoft Files Lawsuit Over Copyright Infringement of Assassin’s Creed for PC
By Stephany on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 12:19 PM PST In Computer, Game Related Laws, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Ubisoft
Ubisoft has filed a lawsuit against Us-based Optical Experts Manufacturing which is the company they hired to reproduce discs for the PC port of Assassin’s Creed. The lawsuit has a monetary worth of over $10 million and sites breach of contract, negligence, lawyer fees, and an undisclosed sum for damages due to copyright infringement.
The lawsuit stems from allegations of an OEM employee taking home a copy of Assassin’s Creed and uploading it onto the internet six weeks before the game shipped in April 2008. Ubisoft has accused OEM of ignoring a number of security protocols which would have prevented this leak, which led to over 700,000 pirated downloads of the title, as well as claiming the breech caused “irreparable harm” to its reputation.
If this was not enough, according to GamesIndustry, Ubisoft also claims that “a bug which was purposely introduced to the unfinished code (which was what was pirated) caused the game to crash partway through – but that this bug found its way into some reviews” which as we are all well aware, caused may a negative review of the game. The subsequent reviews, according to Ubisoft, called into question the reliability of the game thus causing gamers to not purchase the game.
We will be sure to keep you up to date on the progress of Ubisoft’s lawsuit against OEM as more information becomes available.
Poor PC gaming industry.. 700,000 x $60 = $42,000,000 (42 million dollars!!
) Lost. 
The gaming industry needs to come together to develop some kind of special disk drive that is required to be used for “new” PC gaming. Hell yeah it still could be mod chipped and stuff, but it could help get priacy levels down to the console level.
Doubt it would work… us PC gamers love our freedom. I see a steam-esque system taking over.
@Nate – We PC gamers only pay $50 a game.
Likely, only maybe 100 or so of those pirated copies would have actually bought the game, and of those a couple probably still will buy it, especially if that version is buggy.
Wah wah, more crying that pirating ruined our sales numbers. The game on consoles was pretty mediocre, and the port to PC wasn’t that great, especially in the controls department. Leak or no leak it wouldn’t have sold well either way. Stop bitching and making excuses.
@Hand
Id usualy agree with that but your missing the point.
theyre complaning because of early leaks as said:The lawsuit stems from allegations of an OEM employee taking home a copy of Assassin’s Creed and uploading it onto the internet six weeks before the game shipped in April 2008
lol screw all anti piracy stuff it dosnt work anyway… almost anygame is available somewere around the net o.o”