Watch Dogs 2 is about corporate control of the smart city.
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Dallas emergency siren hacking is like a scene out of Watch Dogs 2

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

On Friday night, hackers took control of all the emergency sirens in the city of Dallas. The city’s warning system of 156 sirens started blaring at 11:40 p.m. Friday and continued for 40 minutes, according to the New York Times.

It shouldn’t be possible for this to happen, but it was like a scene from Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs 2 video game, which debuted in December and raised awareness about how it will be possible to hack “smart cities” and the Internet of Things — or making everyday objects smart and connected.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.