Ubisoft 'cracks' own game with stolen patch?

Ubisoft may well have been caught out by one of its forum dwellers, neilthecellist, on the subject of the latest Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 fix.

The patch in question, R6Vegas2_Fix.zip, is, allegedly, an exact (or almost exact) copy of a 'no-cd crack' created by the illegal software piracy group, Reloaded.

The embarassing mistake was brought to light on this forum thread on the official Ubisoft site, where you can see the 'proof' of Reloaded's handiwork.

Many of the forum dwellers have taken great delight in both making fun of Ubisoft for this debacle and also arguing why they themselves are not allowed to discuss such files on the boards, despite Ubisoft allegedly being quite happy to use them in 'official' patches.

One forumite described Ubisoft's mistake as 'epic fail', which just about covers it.

Ubisoft responded by way of Ubi.Vigil, the UK community manager for Ubisoft, saying: "We're looking into this further as this was not the UK Support team that posted this, however if it is an executable that does not need the disc I doubt it has come from an external source.

"There'd be very little point doing so when we already own the original unprotected executeable. As soon as we find out more about this we'll let you know."

Eventually, after much discussion on the thread, it was locked today by the aforementioned Ubi.Vigil, with the following statement:

"I'd say this discussion has run its course, as such it is now locked. The file was removed from the site over a week ago now and the matter is being thoroughly investigated by senior tech support managers here at Ubisoft.

"Needless to say we do not support or condone copy protection circumvention methods like this and this particular incident is in direct conflict with Ubisoft's policies."

Still doesn't explain why the Reloaded tag was in the 'official' fix though.