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30 July 2012 Last updated at 17:15 GMT
Games affected include the massively popular Assassin's Creed series
The Uplay software is bundled with major titles like Assassin's Creed.
"We recommend that all Uplay users update their Uplay PC application without a Web browser open," Ubisoft said.
"This will allow the plug-in to update correctly.
"An updated version of the Uplay PC installer with the patch also is available from Uplay.com."
Uplay is a system that allows gamers to earn points and rewards for performance which are logged online.
As well as the multi-million-selling Assassin's Creed series, Uplay is also used with games such as Call of Juarez: San Francisco, Just Dance 3 and several titles in the Tom Clancy series.
Vacation discovery The spokesman added: "Ubisoft takes security issues very seriously, and we will continue to monitor all reports of vulnerabilities within our software and take swift action to resolve such issues."
The flaw was discovered by Tavis Ormandy, a Google employee.
On a mailing list for information security experts and hobbyists, he wrote: "While on vacation recently I bought a video game called Assassin's Creed Revelations. I didn't have much of a chance to play it, but it seems fun so far.
"However, I noticed the installation procedure creates a browser plug-in for it's accompanying Uplay launcher, which grants unexpectedly (at least to me) wide access to websites."
It was discovered that any website could force users with the plug-in to open any program on their PC.
To demonstrate this, one security researcher created a website proving the exploits' existence. When a person visited the website, the calculator program would launch.
While the calculator is harmless, experts warned that the technique could be used to launch a potentially malicious program.
Ubisoft rush to fix security hole exposed by plug-in
Games affected include the massively popular Assassin's Creed series Games maker Ubisoft has been forced to release an emergency patch to fix a security hole discovered in its Uplay application.
A web browser add-on reportedly left users open to outside attackers gaining control of their computer.The Uplay software is bundled with major titles like Assassin's Creed.
"We recommend that all Uplay users update their Uplay PC application without a Web browser open," Ubisoft said.
"This will allow the plug-in to update correctly.
"An updated version of the Uplay PC installer with the patch also is available from Uplay.com."
Uplay is a system that allows gamers to earn points and rewards for performance which are logged online.
As well as the multi-million-selling Assassin's Creed series, Uplay is also used with games such as Call of Juarez: San Francisco, Just Dance 3 and several titles in the Tom Clancy series.
Vacation discovery The spokesman added: "Ubisoft takes security issues very seriously, and we will continue to monitor all reports of vulnerabilities within our software and take swift action to resolve such issues."
The flaw was discovered by Tavis Ormandy, a Google employee.
On a mailing list for information security experts and hobbyists, he wrote: "While on vacation recently I bought a video game called Assassin's Creed Revelations. I didn't have much of a chance to play it, but it seems fun so far.
"However, I noticed the installation procedure creates a browser plug-in for it's accompanying Uplay launcher, which grants unexpectedly (at least to me) wide access to websites."
It was discovered that any website could force users with the plug-in to open any program on their PC.
To demonstrate this, one security researcher created a website proving the exploits' existence. When a person visited the website, the calculator program would launch.
While the calculator is harmless, experts warned that the technique could be used to launch a potentially malicious program.
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Saturn moon Iapetus' huge landslides stir intrigue
Mystery still surrounds the formation of Iapetus' imposing equatorial ridge Saturn's moon Iapetus frequently plays host to a huge type of landslide or avalanche that is rare elsewhere in the Solar System, scientists report.
Sturzstroms or "long-runout landslides" move faster and farther than geological models predict they should.They have been seen on Earth and Mars, but there is debate about their causes.
Now, images from the Cassini space mission, reported in Nature Geoscience, suggest that heating of icy surfaces helps the landslides keep going.
On Earth, landslides typically travel a horizontal distance that is less than twice the distance that the material has fallen.
Long-runout landslides, by contrast, can travel as much as 30 times the vertical falling distance.
A great many mechanisms have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, ranging from simple sliding on ice to the sound waves from the slide making rock and debris behave more like a fluid.
But there is little consensus on which of these theories, if any, is correct.
Now, Kelsi Singer of Washington University in St Louis, US, and colleagues report that the geography of Iapetus is a unique setting to test these theories.
Iapetus
- Fatter at equator than at its poles; encircled by huge equatorial ridge
- The ridge - a chain of mountains wrapped around Iapetus - reaches up to 20km high
- One side of Iapetus is covered in dark material, while the other side is much brighter
- As a result, it has been described as the "yin and yang" of Saturn's moons
- Discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1671; Cassini also notices dark-light difference
"The landslides on Iapetus are a planet-scale experiment that we cannot do in a laboratory or observe on Earth," Ms Singer said.
"They give us examples of giant landslides in ice, instead of rock, with a different gravity, and no atmosphere. So any theory of long-runout landslides on Earth must also work for avalanches on Iapetus."Iapetus is a geologically interesting place to look; it is a squashed sphere, fatter at its equator than its poles, and is mostly encircled by a ridge that reaches peaks some 20km high.
It also has a number of giant impact craters reaching depths of 25km.
The icy satellite has more giant landslides than any Solar System body other than Mars. The reason, says Prof William McKinnon, also from Washington University, is Iapetus' spectacular topography.
"Not only is the moon out-of-round, but the giant impact basins are very deep, and there's this great mountain ridge that's 20km (12 miles) high, far higher than Mount Everest," he explained.
"So there's a lot of topography and it's just sitting around, and then, from time to time, it gives way."
Ms Singer was looking for stress fractures in the moon's ice, but instead found evidence of 30 massive landslides - 17 along crater walls and 13 along the giant equatorial ridge.
Analysis of the images from these events suggests that the "coefficient of friction" - a measure of how much the slip-sliding of material in a landslide tends to slow it down - on Iapetus is far lower than expected for ice.
It appears that this faster-moving ice seen on Iapetus has a lower friction coefficient than that of slow-moving ice measured in Earth-bound laboratories.
The team suggests that the tiny contact points between bits of ice debris in such a landslide may heat up considerably, melting it and forming a more fluid - and thus less friction-limited - mass of material.
They suggest that physicists here on Earth test the idea in the laboratory, giving insight not only into what is happening on Iapetus, but closer to home as well.
