Ubisoft caught selling 'pirated' Assassin's Creed soundtrack?

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Ubisoft has been accused of selling a torrented soundtrack of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Customers who preordered the "digital deluxe" edition of the title received various extras including the game's soundtrack. According to one customer, the music files that Ubisoft included with his game came from the popular BitTorrent tracker Demonoid.

The AC: Brotherhood soundtrack was uploaded to Demonoid more than four months ago by a member named "arsa13". The same user is credited for encoding the official soundtrack's MP3s (see the screenshots below). "Apple Chamber" is the only song that doesn't mention arsa13, but that track was also excluded from the original torrent file.

This, of course, is ironic given the developer's stance against piracy and torrent sites. Last year the company introduced a new DRM scheme in the name of piracy that requires users to remain online while playing. To the dismay of fans, the mechanism has been used in Assassin's Creed II, The Settlers VII, Splinter Cell: Conviction and other titles.

This is the second time Ubisoft has been caught using torrented content. In 2008, customers who bought a digital copy of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 couldn't launch the game after installing an official update. Ubisoft resolved the issue with a second patch, which was eventually discovered to be a torrented No-CD crack from warez group RELOADED.

We should note that this story first surfaced on Wednesday and Ubisoft hasn't released a public statement besides telling Eurogamer that it's investigating the matter. It shouldn't take more than 48 hours to determine if Brotherhood's retail soundtrack is from a legitimate internal source, so we're not sure what to make of the company's silence.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/42898-ubisoft-caught-selling-pirated-assassins-creed-soundtrack.html

 

[Guest]

What a golden age we live in.

 

[Kibaruk]

I've never said that here before... but this is either epic fail or epic win... can't still see clearly which one of this.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Interesting.

 

[Timonius]

heee heee heee ooops!

 

[yRaz]

kibaruk said:
I've never said that here before... but this is either epic fail or epic win... can't still see clearly which one of this.

http://randomsadas.com/wp-content/uploads/failtacular.jpg

 

[hitech0101]

I am sure when those DRM servers are closed the patch to play offline would be from torrents.Why bother creating a patch that already exists when the game was launched.

 

[Guest]

*facepalm*

 

[ramonsterns]

All companies are like this, blame piracy for their short comings, but only Ubisoft is stupid enough to get caught.

 

[captaincranky]

How would you go about "pirating" your own, (ostensibly copyrighted) sound track?

Coding MP-3 files of somebody else's music doesn't make you the owner.

Did I miss something?

Besides, "FLAC" isn't MP-3.

 

[Darkshadoe]

yRaz said:

kibaruk said:
I've never said that here before... but this is either epic fail or epic win... can't still see clearly which one of this.

http://randomsadas.com/wp-content/uploads/failtacular.jpg

LOL nice

 

[compdata]

Missing something?

Maybe I am missing something here or maybe I don't understand where the users name is showin up. . . But is seems to me that maybe the guy who encrypted the files was an insider employee who was just careless with leaving his name on both copies of files.

 

[ramonsterns]

compdata said:
Maybe I am missing something here or maybe I don't understand where the users name is showin up. . . But is seems to me that maybe the guy who encrypted the files was an insider employee who was just careless with leaving his name on both copies of files.

NOPE.

 

[war59312]

The whole thing is just stupid.

DRM does NOT stop pirating, it only pisses off the honest & legitimate users!

Pirates just bypass the crap without too much effort, time and time again.

I just do not understand why companies are spending millions of $$$ on research and development time on this crap. They should be spending it on making the game better and providing better top notch tech support.

I say again, it's just stupid and a waste of effort (money).

 

[Rick]

captaincranky said:
How would you go about "pirating" your own, (ostensibly copyrighted) sound track?
Coding MP-3 files of somebody else's music doesn't make you the owner.
Did I miss something?
Besides, "FLAC" isn't MP-3.

FLAC takes up a LOT of space, so naturally these files were transcoded to MP3 to be distributed by Ubisoft. After being transcoded, the metatags were left untouched in the final product, which assign credit to the user from Demonoid.

"Piracy" is quite a dubious label for this situation since this is Ubisoft's own work; however, it makes it a little harder to cry foul when you give the same service you deride legitimacy by using it yourself. Ubisoft should be doing this in-house, not using Demonoid to download illegitimate copies of their own works.

This is less of a "Gotcha!" and more of "Laaaazy!" moment...

 

[captaincranky]

"Piracy" is quite a dubious label for this situation since this is Ubisoft's own work; however, it makes it a little harder to cry foul when you give the same service you deride legitimacy by using it yourself. Ubisoft should be doing this in-house, not using Demonoid to download illegitimate copies of their own works.

First, most intellectual property copyrights contain a provision that the content can't be modified or redistributed, so all legal remedies reside with Ubisoft.

And Second, it is entirely possible that Ubisoft was trolling "Demonoid", searching for infringed content.

Although these tactics seem bit amateurish and heavy handed, they certainly were effective in drawing out the infringing party. "Hey those MP-3s are my work"! (Well no, they're not, you're delusional)

 

[Guest]

I really do not see the problem here...If like me we all stuck to our guns and quit buying anything that Ubi.... produces then we would not be worrying about them stealing their own product ( funny actually ;-) I have not purchased one Ubi product since their DRM fiasco and that last abysmal release of the new Silent Hunter......Crap wrapped in a package that can only be used when they let me...No thanks.I will spend my time and money with elsewhere.