Ubisoft-Montreal was targeted by a telephone hoax that provoked a major police mobilization for several hours. In the early evening, as several dozen employees were evacuated from the building after several hours of uncertainty and anguish, police confirmed that the operation was over and that it was a false alarm .
“The operation in connection with a hostage-taking call is over,” police tweeted in the early evening. “No threat was detected and there were no injuries. “An investigation will follow to shed light on the call at the origin of this important police deployment”, according to the authorities. Ubisoft may have been the victim of a telephone hoax known as swatting (“Swat” means in English an intervention unit of the American police), indicate the daily Press and the Canadian channel TVA. This harassment tactic, which aims to trick the police into an anonymous call to force them to intervene urgently, is very popular among online gamers, according to these media.
The revenge of a gamer?
According to Press, investigators are studying the possibility that the incident was “the work of a ‘gamer’ unhappy with a new game from Ubisoft having been designed largely in Montreal.” The perpetrator (s) of this incident will have used this technique to “get revenge” on Ubisoft, according to the online daily. The Montreal police had launched a large operation around 1:30 p.m. local time after receiving an emergency call. This call, made from the Ubisoft games studio, evoked dozens of people taken hostage by five armed men, who demanded ransom for their release, said local channel LCN.
Images broadcast in a loop by the channels showed a group of several dozen employees who had barricaded themselves on the roof of the Ubisoft building. “Oh my God, what’s going on,” tweeted Ubisoft employee Eric Pope, who was telecommuting from his home. ” That’s crazy. My team is on the roof. The Montreal police quickly deployed dozens of police on the scene, including members of its tactical intervention group and tracking dogs. It sealed off the sector in the “Mile-End” district, in the Plateau Mont-Royal borough.
4000 employees
Nearly two hours later, the police had undertaken a meticulous search of the premises and started to evacuate employees. “We are currently in contact with the authorities,” a spokesperson for Ubisoft, Antoine Leduc-Labelle, told Agence France-Presse. In the early evening, footage from the LCN channel showed heavily armed police officers evacuating workers from the roof one after another.
A journalist from Agence France-Presse on the spot saw employees leaving the premises, escorted by police, who were leading them to buses to warm up. They were to be questioned by investigators, said police spokesperson Véronique Comtois. Ubisoft presents its Montreal games studio as “the largest in the world”. Around 4,000 employees normally work at Ubisoft’s Montreal studio, but a large proportion are currently teleworking due to the pandemic.
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