Ubisoft Settles Assassin’s Creed Lawsuit

The Assassin's Creed 3 release date is no longer at risk due to legal issues, as the lawsuit between Ubisoft and (*cough* cash-grabber *cough*) John Beiswenger has been settled out of court.

[Trenta27]

Just about every idea out there has already been taken. We just get rehashes of those ideas. That goes with movies, books, games, everything. This guy just wanted to cash in.

[Nimblest-Assassin]

So stupid.... I hope this half-assed author doesn't get a single penny...

The definition of piracy is a blatant ripoff... he is complaining that one concept in the game is stolen as is suing for millions? He's also trying to back up the fact that they took religion and assassinations too?

Religion and assassinations happened alot in the past. This author is just upset his book was not bought and is trying to cash in... disgusting

[deep_fried_bum_cake]

Not disgusting, just pathetic.

[morganfell]

The Nizari Ismaili should sue him. Or better still, pay him a visit...

[Sucitta]

settled out of court usually means he got paid..

[gatormatt80]

In this case no money was exchanged between either party at this time. How do I know you ask??? Google the term "dismissal without prejudice." It appears to me that the judge may have dismissed this case because there was not sufficient evidence to back this guys claim. If he somehow finds/gathers new evidence then he can bring this suit/claim back up.

It is also possible though this guy ended his own claim, though still retaining the right sue again at a later time.

[RioKing]

^Great detective work, Watson!

[Frankfurt]

I love how the fanboys have NO fucking idea if Creed stole it from the guy's book or not, but like sheep, they jump into AC's defense and bash the author. The guy is a published writer. For a long time. If anything, his credentials are far above most videogame writers (how many good scripts have we seen this gen in a videogame? Shit like GTA 4's writing gets praised in this medium! Videogame writing in 99.99% garbage).

Videogames are INFAMOUS for ripping off movies and books shamelessly (and i say that about even my favorite games, like Crysis 1). If you think ANYTHING in Assassin's Creed plot is even remotelly creative or new, you need to read an actual book some day and stop being a blind, alienated fanboy.

[Danny Dan]

@Frank .. If you think there hasn't been any unique game experiences with awesome script writing, then you sir, are sadly mistaken.

Like Trenta said, the same stories are always being told... Its just HOW they are told is what sets them apart.

[Nimblest-Assassin]

@frankfurt

Im going to explain something to you. Many people are very aware that videogames like to take plot points and ideas from books and movies. Max Payne is based on Noir films, Uncharted is based on movies like Indiana Jones, and the pulp action genre. They have similar concepts and ideas... but do you ever see Stephen Speilberg suing Naughty dog for having similar ideas?

This lawsuit is idiotic based on the sole fact he is saying they "plagarized" and stole "page by page". If link was the story of a man named desmond kidnapped by a templar order due to the fact that he was a member of another secret group called assassins, and is forced to relive the lives of his past ancestors who were assassins.. then we have a problem.

This author is trying to say that Ubisoft stole the ideas of the animus, religion and assassinations...

Religion and assassinations were a big thing in the past... he is suing for them using history? Shouldn't that mean that people who wrote history books be suing him then? Or the ancestors of the people in history should be suing the people who wrote those textbooks? NO.

This author is trying to get attention and is making ridiculous claims and is suing for millions. Also why wait to AC3... his original plan was to have AC3 not released, which is what the settlement is about....

You don't need to be a fanboy of AC to see this is a desperate cry for attention from a writter who never got any. Also, I looked up critic reviews of this book, and many felt the plot was jumbled and ridiculous.

He is trying to sue for "similar ideas" but calls it plagerism. Thats why this lawsuit is a joke...

Also judging by your comment history... it seems like you are the alienated fanboy... mr I hate on the PS3 because I only own an xbox..jesus fanboys like you are the reason gaming today is so negative

lol kept reading your comments and they are hilarious

More sales means its a better game- Yeah then black ops would be the best game ever -_-

AC has crap combat compared to Bayonetta- BAYONETTA IS AN ACTION GAME AND AC IS OPEN WORLD! HOW DO YOU COMPARE THE 2 MR. HUGE AC FAN

Also love how you trash every ps3 game, every ps3 article bringing up UNCHARTED COPIED GOW EVERYWHERE... look ND said they researched cover in games like gow... if uncharted was a ripoff of GOW it would play exactly like GOW... also love how you try to trash the sales, story whatever you can get

Oh you poor MS fanboy.... don't even play the games you trash. I may not own an xbox, but I have played Halo and gears, and I actually love the Halo series and am looking forward to 4....

But your sheer love of MS would be funny... if it wasn't so pathetic

Oh what the hell... I'll laugh anyways

Also before you give me the oh... I played the PS3 games... Im a 5 foot 4 purple hippo who has had sexy times with hundreds of women... see I can be anything too on the internet

[BISHOP-BRASIL]

@Nimblest-Assassin

You are absolutely right there! I don't know how so many people get away with those stupid lawsuits...

Wait, worst part is that we do know how they do it, they hold out to sue when the target can't deal with waiting on the not so fast judicial system, exploiting companies time schedulles to make money. How can the judges not be aware of it?

Sooner or later judges will start to be more and more demanded to realize that similar setting or themes is not the same of plagiarism. We don't need courts to discuss what is plagiarism and what isn't all the damn tine, it costs taxes money! Have some law specialist to just actually read the book and play the game would prevent the need for so much court arguing and prevent people exploiting the system.

Plagiarism is when you sign as yours something that isn't your work. It's not plagium unless you can pinpoint parts of one piece (speechs, situations, ideas, etc) that are being used THE EXACTLY SAME in the other piece. It's not just some similarities, they could out right had been inspired by someone else's book and not be commiting a crime if they are not using this original ideas and assets.

The religion conspiracies, the assassination conspiracies and the time travel are practically free domain as they are really old ideas that we can't even track the original author. A new books on these subjects appear literally every month.

The whole genetic access to past "memories" could be plagiarism if they were developed the same as in the book but they aren't. In Assassin's Creed universe they use a machine called animus and DNA of a subject to read into what it's ancestors were doing, not the actual memory of the subject, the subject experience it's ancestor's life. The subject itself (Desmond) is monitorated with what appear to be pretty common tech to read the brain in this universe.

In Link universe they have this major oposition between science and religion about how is memory storaged, while science claim to be the brain, religion (and it's billion of believers) claim to be the soul. A scientist group called Biochip or something accidenntly discover that inside DNA of every cell there is this quantum particle with no mass and atemporal stage that could storage everything that already happened, they travel through this "quantum DNA memories" to discover secrets of the soul and the moment of creation.

As you guys can see, it's completely different sci-fi going on there, the only common point is DNA and Past being related, but they are accessed in different ways, with different objectives, under different circustances in a different setting... And this correlation is not original to any of the pieces. In the 50's scientists started running researches to discover what kind of stuffs were genetically hereditary, brain work being one of the big questions, memory was brough up multiple times since then.

[deep_fried_bum_cake]

Nimblest-Assassin @Frankfurt reply

*begins slow clap*

[dark-hollow]

but you know what? i think its pretty cleaver from author of this book, why? if he won the case he would get his money, and if he lost, he would gain more publicity from all the news outlets that spread his news.

now more people know about his book and maybe some will buy it out of curiousity to see the releation with AC franchise.

its pathetic? yes but thats how the world works.

[orange-skittle]

That was the intent(IMO), but reviewers took to amazon and shot his book review to 1 star because of it. He was a self published author, so you know he needed the attention. He didn't get squat and to make matters worse, the story resembled another from back in the 70's more so than his and that author didn't give a rats ass.

BTW, I pre-ordered AC3 because you can already see this game is going to be a breakout hit. They said the animation rivals Uncharted and is absolutely beautiful and seamless.

[256bit]

maybe the author doesnt play video games.

[BinaryMind]

In other news, John Beiswenger is being sued by Nintendo for its use of the name "Link."

[awi5951]

Yeah the frank herbert Dune books are full of genetic memory and reliving or remembering the past lives of your ancestors.

[Summons75]

like the game was at risk to begin with HA

[Redempteur]

Pitifull uninspired author..
He should be sued by vatican for using the bible as a source of inspiration as well

[KMCROC54]

Maybe someone should let the Vatican know . lol

[TekoIie]

"Those same ideas were also present in books prior to Link, and this settlement basically proves that the whole suit was likely just a cash-grab by a failed author trying to make some quick coin".

Aw man, I'm hurt dog!

This guy is bring the insults like mad and he should! AC is one of the best franchises this gen and if it got "cancelled" it would be a big blow to Ubi and us gamers. Without AC where would we get our awesome "What the F**K" endings?

[sjaakiejj]

I'd say this lawsuit wasn't started with the intention to finish. In fact, I'd say that this author was looking to promote his book. Any publicity is good publicity, and with the media exposure surrounding this lawsuit there's been plenty of publicity...

[tarbis]

suing just to freely advertise his book. his books must be being eaten by moths now.

[TekoIie]

He did see the amazon reviews right? He's gonna be really impressed with the "publicity" he got =|

[sjaakiejj]

The publicity increased exposure of this author to the world. Regardless of Amazon reviews, some people will buy it.

Quote from one of the reviews:
"After hearing all the trouble being caused by it I went about finding a copy outside of amazon and read it over the course of 4 days (on break from college so had plenty of time)."

[RyuDrinksTheDew]

this was a silly lawsuit.

nothing but money was the intention from the start.

even if the author was trying to gain publicity, it ended up backfiring with the amazon review madness towards his book.

[KMCROC54]

All ubisoft did today was put a band aid over a cut, instead of getting it stitched closed for good.
This has to be the dumbest course of action by any lawyer , settle but still allow you to takes us for more cash later.

[theWB27]

Wasn't dumb at all. If they had let this go on then it may have hampered the release of AC3 this year. They planned on taking a hiatus after this release, so while we wait a few more years for the AC4, they'll be dealing with the lawsuit instead of AC3 being banned until the suit would have been dealt with. Genius strategy.

[Valenka]

The author was no doubt trying to either make some quick money or get free advertising for his book. Pathetic.

[SegataShanshiro]

Argh! that bastard! Getting money from a poor and humble multi million dollar company, how could he do such a thing!
You people fail to see who the real bad guy is
Everyone complains about ubisoft and their drm and their yearly assassins creed game and about activision and their cod crap, and how they get every penny from us at any chance they get but when a memeber of society gets money from them he is a money hungry cash grabbing bastard?
WHAT THE MOTHE****ING SHIT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE SERIOUSLY!!! Whatever ubisof is giving the guy, it should be more because theyre a bunch of greedy bastards who only think about how they should screw is over with their next game. The hypocresy of N4G has no limit! You people disgust me! Defending one of the biggest video game companies? Wtf is wrong with you people!

[Wintersun616]

The book and AC games have some similar themes, and the guy is suing because of plagiarism, which is nowhere to be seen. A handful of similarities does not equal to plagiarism. Ubisoft might not be a charity company, but it still deserves to be defended when they're sued without any real basis for that lawsuit.

[MacDonagh]

First off; Assassin's Creed was never meant to have this Sci-Fi gimmick, as it was meant to be a stand-alone historical fiction set in the middle-east as a middle-eastern assassin. Ubisoft weren't doing great during 07, so it's not outwith possibility that they wanted a game with concurrent sequels to keep themselves afloat and demanded that the Assassin's Creed game have a "link" (see what I did there?) with different timelines within less of a year until the release of the first game which was the best selling game ever for Ubisoft in 07. How rather odd that Assassin's Creed somehow pulled out this concept that is rather similar to Link just to propagate more sequels with diminishing returns.
I'm not saying he's correct, but from what I've seen from the circumstantial evidence that has been presented, the author may have a case to argue that his idea was "borrowed" by Ubisoft. The lack of critical thinking on this issue is disturbing yet prevalent among gamers who believe in their flawed logic that Ubisoft are well within their rights to steal concepts from people and make a substantial amount of profit from it. It'll be interesting to see if he tries to sue Ubisoft and where it will go from there. Meanwhile, keep voting down his books on Amazon because your idiocy dictates that you need to.

[Wintersun616]

His idea isn't even completely copied into the AC games. They only share a few similarities, which is not grounds for suing for plagiarism. It's not illegal to take an idea or concept, modify it and gain profit. And hell, I said that giving you the benefit of assuming that Link was indeed the very source of some parts of AC.

If you so adamantly believe this man should be paid to by Ubisoft, then following the same (faulty) logic you agree that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas should sue Naughty Dog for obvious inspirations and similarities which the Uncharted games have "stolen" from the Indiana Jones movies.

Also I never voted down his books on Amazon, or even said a bad word about them, so you can keep your insults to yourself and grow up.

[MacDonagh]

I apologise if you believe the Amazon book review jibe seemed to be directed at you. It was my intention to point out the ludicrous fanboyism that has become prevalent within gaming, that ultimately undermines everything that was/is good about gaming.
Before you jump down my throat, consider the circumstances and the wildly improbable coincidences that would've had to take place in order for the Animus to have been propagated less than a year before the release date of Assassin's Creed. Nicking a central concept from a book/film is one thing, paying homage to action films in order to complement an action-adventure game is a completely different kettle of fish. Even Indiana Jones was inspired by old film serials by Republic pictures and various characters from books like The Lost World and King Solomon's Temple, so your point is moot.
The saddest thing about the whole debacle is that it shows that this Sci-Fi gimmick wasn't needed whatsoever and they could've just linked the different time eras with the same group of assassins fighting some sort of menacing force that gets closer from the horizon. Wow! That didn't require any stupid machine to make the plot any more relevant!

Whatever.
A drab of slate, a cloth-o-silver slut,
To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt.

[tiffac008]

I can't believe he got away with milking money out of Ubi. :/