The news of this hit the major sites and word spread very quickly about this sadly funny incident. Before long the news was that any pirated copy of Watch Dogs was riddled with malware. After doing some digging we found that (as always) there is more to the story than first published.

According to the information we have been able to put together the initial release of the game (sometimes called zero-day) were clean. None of them contained the malware that was found in the torrented version of the game. Someone with access to the clean copies of the game then recompiled it with their bit coin mining utility and then pushed it into the Torrent Swarm. From there he let the swarm do all of the work.

But things are not all beer and pizza for the guy that pulled this one. From what we have been able to find out his identity is known to the community and (as we have said in the past) these guys have a habit of policing their own. This means that he might never get the chance to enjoy his ill-gotten gains before the rest of the world comes down on him.
So what is the lesson learned from all this? Well there are a few that come to mind.
Always treat anything you download from the internet with suspicion.
It is usually better to buy your games and software.
Not all “pirates” are bad, many of them do this for fun and have no desire to earn anything or cause harm to the individuals that grab their work.
Never, ever piss off the guys in the scene by giving them a bad name… believe me when I say that their response can be swift and pretty ugly.

Talk amongst yourselves