Ubisoft's ‘Watch Dogs’ Publicity Stunt Causes A Bomb Scare!

In an attempt to promote its new video game title Watch Dogs to the Australian market, Ubisoft sent website Ninemsn a special promotional item that eventually led the bomb squads to be called in!

According to numerous reports, the gaming developers sent out a mysterious safe to one of the Sydney-based journalism company's reporters, and were supposed to send instructions through a voicemail message. That voicemail was never received; the reporter got antsy, messed around with the safe, and eventually set off some sort of alarm.

"This is definitely the other side of the line in terms of what it's safe for a PR company to send anonymously to a newsroom", Ninemsn's Hal Crawford explained. "The thing was black, heavy and slightly creepy. We did check with other newsrooms to see if they had received a similar package as we thought it was a PR stunt, but no one else had. We weren't panicked at any point, but given there was no note explaining what it was, we had to take sensible precautions."

With the mysterious black safe making so much noise, the bomb squad was eventually called in.

"As part of a themed promotion for Watch Dogs, our team in Australia sent voicemail messages to some local media alerting them that they'd receive a special package related to the game," Ubisoft said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the delivery to Ninemsn didn't go as planned, and we unreservedly apologies to Ninemsn's staff for the mistake and for any problems caused as a result."

This could have been a cool marketing experience, but instead it went terribly wrong.