Developers artificially boosting their games’ stats on review websites? That’s really nothing new. But a company actually downloading an illegal torrent of its own soundtrack to include with the game’s digital special edition? That’s a little bizarre.
Yet that’s what Ubisoft are now being accused of. A user on web aggregator Reddit who pre-ordered the PC version of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, scheduled to release later this week, got access to the digital goodies included with the game and discovered something a little bizarre: the soundtrack files included with the Digital Deluxe Edition include references to “arsa13” in the metadata – a user who uploaded a torrent of the soundtrack in FLAC format last year following its release alongside the console game.
That means not only did Ubisoft accidentally release a pirated version of the soundtrack, they actually converted it to MP3 first. Classy.
It’s not the first time Ubisoft have done this sort of thing either. Back in 2008, they released a patch for Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 to allow play without the disk in the drive, which later turned out to just be a “NoCD” crack released by piracy group “Reloaded”.
The Reddit user in question notes that it could be just the unnamed digital storefront he used, but it makes sense that such files would be compiled together by Ubisoft and then sent out to each retailer. Does this make Ubisoft guilty of pirating its own soundtrack?
Root Ginger
Obviously fake. The screen shot is taken from id3 tag editing program mp3tag. I could do that in a few seconds with a bunch of mp3 files.
sfgdfds
my thoughts exactly
topgear
Can’t wait for FLAC to become the norm, the quality of it is insane!
Foxhound_Solid
Slip up 2011….
peespee63
Haha. Not piracy, but highly hilarious. That is a world-class kind of a fail (if it is indeed true), but makes you wonder doesn’t it?
InternationalGamer
Its their own stuff, not a big deal, its just made into a big deal.
Yes its bizzare that they did it like that but it affects no one and nobody in a bad way… so where is the problem?
gazzagb
Could easily have been faked, I seriously doubt Ubisoft or any major publisher would pirate music, especially when piracy costs them so much.
fattyuk
How does one pirate there own property?