Watch Dogs PR Epic Fail

Before we get to this epic fail, something I wanna point out.

Last week Tuesday, Nintendo and GameSpy ended their partnership completely, meaning as of then, you can no longer play your Wii or DS games online.  But it's not just the Wii and DS that will forever lose its official online service.  Some other gaming services will be gone at the end of this month when Gamespy shuts down its gaming servers completely. 

 Games like the Star Wars Battlefront games, Saints Row II, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, Bulletstorm for the PS3, Crysis 1, 2 and Crysis Wars, and even 3 Command and Conquer games will be taken offline.

Later, I will talk more about the Gamespy shut down when the servers are no more and which games are affected.

Meanwhile, in Ubisoft land, Watch Dogs has released onto a number of system: The 360, PS3, PS4, XBone and PC with a Wii U version due out later this year.  Unfortunately, it seems something went horribly wrong.

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A PR stunt for Ubisoft's new Watch Dogs game has backfired, with a Police bomb squad called to the offices of an Australian news station.

A package arrived at the offices of Ninemsn yesterday, containing a letter and a small safe. Media industry site Mumbrella reports that the letter told the addressee to check their voicemail, only that reporter didn't have a new voicemail. When they then punched a pin code into the safe, the safe started beeping.

Growing slightly concerned it might be an explosive device, Ninemsn started calling other newsrooms to see if they'd gotten a similar package.

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Now as you are aware, Ninemsn is a joint effort between Nine Entertainment Company and the Microsoft Network, founded in 1997. The company also acquired mobile publishing leader HWW Limited and leading Australian SMS and mobile marketing service provider 5th Finger Pty Ltd in 2006.  This allows the site for much better

But something like what's going on is freaking me out a bit.

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"This is definitely the other side of the line in terms of what it's safe for a PR company to send anonymously to a newsroom", Ninemsn's Hal Crawford told Mumbrella. "The thing was black, heavy and slightly creepy.1

"We did check with other newsrooms to see if they had received a similar package as we thought it was a PR stunt, but no-one else had. We weren't panicked at any point, but given there was no note explaining what it was, we had to take sensible precautions."

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This is getting nerve wrenching.  I mean who would be stupid enough to leave something like that?

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That meant evacuating some staff and calling the bomb squad, who opened the safe (you can see it pried open up top) to find...a copy of Watch Dogs, a baseball/iconic cap and a beanie.

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.......

EPIC FAIL!

Ubisoft, what were you think driving Ninemsn to calling in the Bomb Squad?  You should be ashamed of yourselves resorting to this kind of negative publicity. 

If anything, this is going to look bad on their part and on Watch Dogs.

Works cited: Reddit user Stevoisiak
Electronic Arts
Kotaku