Novelist Sues Ubisoft For Assassin's Creed Story

Finally, DIE FUCKING BASTARD GAME DIE

Hey Edd, please be strong and show on this doll where Assassin's creed touched you.

So it has come to this. Well, every time I play one of their games it's like getting a drink with a roofie in it.

Have you talked to anyone else about this? Like your parents? the cops? were there witnesses? I'm here for ya Edd.

This may be full of **** due to the fact he waited this long to file it. We'll see tho.

Not necessarily. Unless he pays attention to video games, there's no reason why he would have known about this.

Having said that, this definitely sounds like a crap lawsuit to me. He seems to be latching onto a load of tenuous connections and claiming the developer ripped them from his work. It's a pretty old trick, and courts are pretty good at seeing through it.

But But... the game looks so awesome... You couldn't of ubisoft!

Shouldn't Nintendo sue over the name of the novel "Link" one of the most iconic characters in gaming history.

That was my thought. Haha.

How? link has nothing to do with zelda. >.>

Unless he can prove that someone at Ubisoft had read his book prior to making AC he'll probably lose. US courts have been siding with the corporations and the defendants in these sorts of disputes recently on those grounds. I've read about a lot of similar lawsuits concerning movies recently including one where the plaintiff could prove that he mailed the alleged stolen script to the defendant's office, but he couldn't prove that anyone actually read it.

Since I haven't read the book, I can't comment for certain, but I have a feeling this guy is just trying to cash in. The idea of genetic memory is nothing new. Herbert did in the Dune series, and I'd be surprised if it was a new concept back then. It doesn't really mean much when two stories share surface details. There would have to a large amount of very specific details to correlate for him to have any case at all. If all it took for a successful suit was the stuff this guy is suing for, nobody would ever be able to publish anything again without getting sued.

To the online petitions!
:pops head off bust on table and presses red button hidden inside:
:bookshelf moves aside revealing small computer room with anime pinup girl posters on wall:
:computer boots up, loading screen of Da Vincis Mona Lisa made of Minecraft blocks appears:

Hey! When did you see my computer set up?

Well damn now Ill have to put Luis Royo posters up and change my loading screen to a landscape view of the Parthenon built in Halo Forge.

Where was he five years ago?

Under a mountain

I still say he ends up not getting a dime, and maybe getting counter-sued for Ubisoft's legal expenses.

This could be possible. Afterall, the sci-fi/conspiracy parts of AC are so bad compared to the historical drama (at least in AC2), that I wouldn't be suprised if the Ubi writing staff didn't create it.

Having just read the full complaint, which contains excerpts of text, I have determined two things:

1. John Beiswenger is a terrible writer.

2. Parts of that claim are pure bullshit.

One of the claims literally states that "good vs. evil" is an important theme in both works, and offers no examples beyond that.

Reading over the filing, it feels like John B. basically sat on his novel until there were enough unique pieces of Assassin's Creed media to file against (He names 11 unique AC products, claiming damages on each), and until Ubisoft was at its weakest (right before ACIII releases). John knows that he would never win profits from ACIII, but if he can threaten to delay its release and screw up all of Ubi's press, they will likely settle (as Daniel suggested) rather than put millions of dollars at risk.

Here are John B's own examples of how his novel "makes references to assassins and assassinations in regards to the link device and process"

"If John Wilkes Booth fathered a child after he assassinated Lincoln,
and we found a descendant alive today, we could place Booth at the
scene and perhaps smell the gunpowder.” “Ancestral memories?” “As
far back as you want,” on page 290 of Link.

“The driver paused, then explained. “The U.S. Government has just
been contacted by the Israeli prime minister. Most of his cabinet
members have been assassinated during a cabinet meeting. The
assassins missed him, and his security people caught one of the
perpetrators,” on page 294 of Link.

The Israeli official glared as the vice president. “Fool,” he thought.
“We used our memory-recall technology and almost killed him. He
will not cooperate,” he said with his voice rising in pitch. “Your
technology [Link] can extract from him what we want even if he is in
a coma,” he shouted, on page 298 of Link.

“I have given much thought to this. I know the very stability of our
government is at stake. We must find who was behind the mass
assassination, but if the Search International process is in our hands,
in the hands of any government, it will lead to great evils,” on page
309 of Link.

Better watch out, Tom Clancy, John Beiswenger will be knocking on your door next...!

Oh, right.

Meh! still better then most Assassin's creed fan fiction i've read. At least there's no time paradox romance.

That's a bunch crap there since the Bible has Garden of Eden, the forbidden fruit, and Adam and Eve so the guy can make no claim to those since that is not his at all anyways.

I believe this guy is just craving money and thought he would attack someone or company that came the closest to what he wrote to hit on that.

Loser Writer!!!!

Even if this guy did "invent" the idea of the animus, that doesn't mean that his story is the only way that technology can be used in fiction - I highly doubt his novel features an elaborate conspiracy spanning the crusades, renaissance italy, and revolutionary america.

For him to sue because of *one* similarity between the stories is like the Estate of HG Wells suing the makers of Back to the Future for using a time machine in their story.

Wow! This guy is on the the same level of Robin Antonick suing EA.

get yer pitchforks!!
Get yer pitchforks here!!
Buy two pitchforks and get 2 torches for free!!

But I only want 1 pitchfork and a torch.

We'll go halfsies, Im gonna duct tape my torch to the end of my pitchfork. Angry mobs should be efficient and threatening.

Man, everything is a copyright infringement nowadays. 2012 years into this stuff...NOTHIING is original anymore. I can guarantee someone else has wrote this EXACT thing in the past 2012 years, somewhere...

ROFL, what, you think the world is only 2012 years old? wow.

So fail it deserves 2 comments.

When I first heard of Assassin's Creed, the core premise sounded an awful lot like both Michael Chrichton's Timeline and the Cartoon Network show Time Squad. Then I thought of a bunch of shows/films/books in which time travel is a significant/central/driving plot element and there are whole catalogs of tropes on TVTropes dedicated to it. In other words, the 'ideas' kind of plagiarism isn't going to fly. He'll probably have to go for the significant textual similarities angle. Judging by previous comments I'm guessing that one's a non-starter.