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This month, Ubisoft kicked off a viral campaign for its open-world title Watch Dogs, promising updates to fans who signed up. This morning, the site (as reported by Kotaku) announced the "unexplained" death of fictional art gallery owner Joseph Demarco to all who had signed up.

Following this, it was discovered that the messages that had been sent were not in the BCC field but the CC field, meaning that all of the e-mail addresses of participants who had received the messages were made available for all to see.

According to Kotaku, over a thousand participants were hit by such messages, which came in waves affecting 500 players each. Whoever was behind this seemed to be moving along the alphabet, starting with addresses that began with the letter A, but before the sender could get to the addresses starting with I and M, the problem had been fixed.

It's possible that this whole fiasco could be a part of a larger publicity stunt, considering the fact that Watch Dogs is a game based on the themes of hacking and hacking-induced paranoia. But considering how this has affected people (Kotaku reports that people have been hit by numerous unpleasant messages from strangers), it's likely that this was a big mistake on someone's part.

What do you guys think? Questionable PR stunt or huge management blunder?

Source: Kotaku

Peter Grimm A writer, journalist, and aspiring storyteller, Peter Grimm has been gaming since the days of the Nintendo 64, and reporting on the goings-on in the World of Gaming since late 2011. His base of writing operations is located within the void between Here and There, or so he would have you think.

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