French video game developer and publisher Ubisoft have publicly apologized for a PR stunt carried out in Australia that caused an office to be evacuated a police bomb squad to be called out to the scene. 
TheLocal.fr reports that the situation arose when a copy of the game was sent to a journalist’s office in a sealed black safe, in-keeping with the game’s narrative which concerns the protagonist gaining access to personal information and city infrastructure using his hacking skills. The marketing campaign for Watch Dogs has been littered with other stunts intended to garner online shares and social media discussion. A ‘real life street hack‘ was posted to YouTube by Ubisoft last week where a supposed shopkeeper enticed customers into his shop with the promise of a high-tech phone that would allow them all the powers of a master hacker, before turning his would-be customers over to the police. While the need for Ubisoft to make a public apology might seem like a bad situation for the behemoth publisher, it will no doubt help the story—and thus, the game—to have the desired effect of ‘going viral’. That story is certainly more beneficial to the game and its developer than the less-than-savoury insight into the development that was posted to Reddit earlier today. Yesterday, Ubisoft announced that Watch Dogs amassed the highest first-day sales figures in the history of the company—expect to see plenty more of the series as this new generation of consoles continues.
