Ubisoft Sues Disc Manufacturing Company Over Leaking Assassin’s Creed

There are few PC developers who haven’t felt the effects of piracy, and it’s becoming a bigger issue each and every day. It’s even gone so far that Crytek, creators of Crysis, said that particular title would be their last exclusive on the PC, simply due to the vast amounts of piracy. What results in the desire to thwart pirates, is to release insane copy protection, and despite the fact it doesn’t work, it’s still there.

Well, it looks like Ubisoft needs something even better than copy protection, as the company has found out that the disc production company they used for duplication, Optical Experts Manufacturing, actually leaked the copy they received to the Internet. How did Ubisoft know? It was a rip of the exact copy the company was given, and also found out to be uploaded by one of their employees. Ouch.

Ubisoft is suing the company for $10 million for breach of contract, negligence and copyright infringement, and I seriously hope they win. I’m not huge fan of Ubisoft to begin with, but if the people you contract to duplicate your game actually have the nerve to go and release it to the Internet, they deserve the nice fine. Let’s see if others are still going to contract with these guys, because though I’m not up to par on disc manufacturing labs, I’m pretty sure Ubisoft has not been the only victim.

The publisher alleges that OEM had agreed to abide by–and thereafter ignored–an array of security procedures that could have prevented the leak. Ubisoft further alleges that OEM admitted to not following through on its security commitments and causing the leak. One such security procedure was to prevent copies of the game from ever leaving OEM’s premises.