Ubisoft Watch Dogs Gameplay Becomes Reality: System Hack By Cybercriminals Exposes Gamers Passwords And Email Addresses

Game company Ubisoft may have experienced the premise of their upcoming title Watch Dogs first-hand after their systems were breached and hacked to steal users' names, e-mail addresses, and passwords.

On the official Ubisoft blog, the company revealed that "one of [their] Web sites was exploited to gain unauthorized access to some of our online systems."

"During this process, we learned that data had been illegally accessed from our account database, including user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords. It's important to note that no personal payment information is stored with Ubisoft, so fortunately all credit/debit card information was safe from this intrusion."

Although the company has apologized for the cyberattack, it is hauntingly similar to what Watch Dogs, an "open-world, cyberpunk thriller," is about.

"Once you're in a mission and you have an objective, say, to get information from this person, that is a problem and you can use the tools in any way you want to solve it," says lead designer Danny Belanger.

"We're not saying, mission A is shooting, mission B is driving, mission C is stealth; if you're clever and you really use the tools you can play it the way you want."

The idea of surveillance hacking and urban paranoia is one of the ways Ubisoft is promoting the title, especially in their latest campaign, WeareData.

"In the video Watch_Dogs, the city of Chicago is run by a Cetral Operating System (CTOS). This system uses data to manage the entire city and to solve complex problems. Traffic jams, war against crime, power management..." says the official WeareData website.

"This is not fiction anymore. Smart cities are real, it's happening now. A huge amount of data is collected and managed every day in our modern cities, and those data are available for everybody."

The website display collected information on cities like Berlin, London, and Paris, ranging from transport schedules, energy consumption, and "geo-localized social media activities for the cities' residents, including their public posts on Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Twitter."