'Watch Dogs' PR stunt leads to Australian news office evacuation

A PR stunt to promote the newly released Ubisoft game 'Watch Dogs' caused the evacuation of the Ninemsn offices in Sydney, Australia. During the early evening business hours; an electronic safe was delivered to office, along with an instruction letter indicating that the recipient needed to call in to his voice mail for further instructions.

According to the arstechnica article, there was one problem - the recipient did not have voice mail, so he simply typed in the PIN code taped to the top of the safe, causing it to start beeping. Fearing that the package might actually be a bomb, editors decided to evacuate the newsroom and call in the bomb squad.



Ninemsn reports that Four police cars and a police rescue unit responded to the office, and scanned the safe before removing it to the basement and forcing it open.

When the safe was opened, authorities found a copy of Watch Dogs, along with a baseball cap and beanie.

Ninemsn publisher Hal Crawford said, "the PR company no doubt got carried away with their creativity and ended up sending us something the bomb squad had to open up."

Ironically, Ninemsn does not even cover video games.