Ubisoft: PC Piracy Rate 93-95%

[ockky]

link

let the ranting begin!

 

[darkewaffle]

I doubt there are really that many more illegitimate download/sales of a title than there are legitimate sales, but it's an ambiguous statement. On the other hand, I wouldn't be at all surprised if "93-95% of PC gamers have pirated software" were true.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I think they are mistaken. I won't even pirate Ubisoft games, no interest. I think these companies over value their products.

 

[KaOTiK]

Ubisoft can't even get their lies in order.

They came out and said a few months back that their always on DRM was a big success and had a clear reduction in piracy amount. Now they come out and say this?

Ahh this company is so full of fail. Them, EA, and Activision all need to DIAF

 

[ImpulsE69]

All these statements are for the shareholders. They say whatever they think the shareholders will want to hear. Lies or no lies. It's how companies work these days.

 

[Arkadrel]

Im calling BS. 95% of all games are not pirated.

That a person pirates once, doesnt mean they dont buy 20 times as many games as they pirate.
Which is MUCH more common, than the other way around.

Anyways if Ubisoft wants to make F2P games thats fine.
But BS statements about piracy are annouying, as is blameing it on the PC.

Consol games get pirated nearly as much as PC ones. Yet its always the "evil" PC users that only get blamed for piracy.

 

[Kalmah]

For the lazy.

3-95% PC piracy rate means F2P is just as effective, with lower costs Ubisoft

ubisoft.com


Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has told GamesIndustry International that the percentage of paying players is the same for free to play as it is for PC boxed product: around five to seven per cent.
Speaking to GamesIndustry International editor Matt Martin at Gamescom, Guillemot revealed that free to play has been an effective way for Ubisoft to market product to territories in which PC gaming had been so badly affected by piracy that profit was impossible.
"We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it," said the French CEO. "The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn't previously - places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.
"It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content."
"On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated."

Added to that is the fact that free to play is generally cheaper to produce and distribute, able to cannibalise existing assets and avoid the costs of getting boxes on shelves. Whilst this does make the creation of new games easier, Guillemot was keen to point out that it's not a magic recipe - games must still be tailored to fit the audience's needs.
"We also take content which we've developed in the past, graphics etc, and we can make cheaper games and improve them over time. What's very important is that we change the content and make it a better fit to the customer as time goes on."
Whilst free to play has proven useful for the publisher in breaking new markets, it's not likely to replace the company's core business. Guillemot is confident that the console market will regain its strength once the next generation of machines becomes available, something which can't come soon enough.
"I think it's very important for new generations to come regularly with innovations for the industry, so I think we've been waiting a bit too long."

"We must be careful because the consoles are coming. People are saying that the traditional market is declining and that F2P is everything - I'm not saying that. We're waiting for the new consoles - I think that the new consoles will give a huge boost to the industry, just like they do every time that they come. This time, they took too long so the market is waiting.
"With the innovation that we'll see from, first, the Wii U then the other consoles, the market is going to grow enormously again.
"I think it's very important for new generations to come regularly with innovations for the industry, so I think we've been waiting a bit too long. What is important is that when those new generations do come, they bring enough innovation to make the market strong again."

Considering college dorms, China etc... his piracy percentage might be accurate.

Ubisoft can't even get their lies in order.

They came out and said a few months back that their always on DRM was a big success and had a clear reduction in piracy amount. Now they come out and say this?

Ahh this company is so full of fail. Them, EA, and Activision all need to DIAF

LMAO. It works and it doesn't work.


It really does piss me off about the next gen console innovation bullshit. Consoles have mostly served to drag the pace of innovative games down. It's usually the least common denominator. It does have its place with sports games, Mario-like games etc.. This whole thing feels like an all-out attack on PC gaming to me. To paraphrase it reads kind of like this, "Mumble mumble mumble we can't make a good game mumble mumble pc piracy mumble mumble fuck you mumble mumble."

I feel like they are trying to pull a Brian on 'Half Baked' ... "I'm not going to do! What everybody thinks I'm going to do! Freak out, man! All I want to know, is who's coming with me?!"
It's like a disguised pitty party trying to get others to come along.

 

[LurkerPrime]

That piracy rate is ludicrous. It could hold some truth in other countries though. However since Steam came along, I dont know anyone who has pirated a game(it could also be that we all have good paying jobs now). F2P does have its place in the market, but its not for every game. It does at least let you effectively demo a game before deciding to put any money into it.

 

[thujone]

look at sales of any Ubisoft game. now do the math on how many people are playing that game if those sales are only 5-7% of the total people playing it. does not compute.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Steam disagrees.

 

[Red Storm]

Ubisoft Bullshit Rate: 93-95%

 

[Arkadrel]

That simply cannot be true.

If you have 10 friends that play PC games, ask them if lately they have pirated a game,
and if theyve bought any games lately.

Atleast in my case (people I know) this 93% of PC games are pirated = bullsh*t

 

[WiseUp216]

My personal experience with piracy goes one of two ways:

1) Download torrent. Wow, this game is awesome. Buy from Steam/Amazon.
or
2) Download torrent. Wow, I'm glad I didn't waste $60 on this steaming pile of $#!%.

There are only 2-3 titles a year that I buy on release day without trying first, not counting all the $3.00-9.99 Steam games that I buy on a whim.

I think (and hope) that a lot of people approach it like I do.

 

[thujone]

look at sales of any Ubisoft game. now do the math on how many people are playing that game if those sales are only 5-7% of the total people playing it. does not compute.

...and of course i can't find any hard sales figures for a specific title on pc.


but yeah... how many millions of people do ubisoft think are actually playing their games?

 

[Anubis]

TBH i dont even know what games ubisoft makes.

which makes me LOL

 

[aigomorla]

UBI is trolling!!!!

its noway near that amount.

So let me tell you what they are probably including...
what happens is you buy the UBIFAIL game.. and it doesnt work because of DRM, we go on google and look for a way to make it work.

So you end up getting stupid crack on the game you bought to make the stupid DRM go away, and make the game playable.
Or so you can play when UBIFAIL's login server are down, which is like almost ALWAYS, so you can play your single player game without internet connection.

UBIFAIL, is FAIL on massive levels...
(i will never support them again, nor buy ANY GAME from them no matter how great it is... i got BURNED way too many times.)
There games are ALWAYS BROKEN until like the 9th patch.

To be honest, i bet the witcher was pirated way more then all of UBIFAIL's collection combined.

TBH i dont even know what games ubisoft makes.

which makes me LOL

dont touch them with a 50 foot pole...
UBISoft is one company i wish they would just go under.
They have the absolute worst DRM;s next to Blizzard D3, and EA at times...
although recently i think EA might be a better company over the two when it comes to DRM's.

Consol games get pirated nearly as much as PC ones. Yet its always the "evil" PC users that only get blamed for piracy.

LOL thats because u need a PC to pirate console games.
So they want to kill all PC users.

 

[PowerYoga]

Nobody should give a rats ass on what Ubi says. They've made it clear they hate PC gamers so vote with your wallets.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

Most of my friends pirate single player games.

 

[nurturedhate]

lets do some quick and probably terrible math. Couldn't find data on any Ubisoft games but did find info for Max Payne 3. Looks like it sold 440k in its first month (http://www.shacknews.com/article/74374/max-payne-3-sells-440k-in-debut-month-called-a) Also, they are saying this is a very low amount sold and that it is across all three platforms (ps3, 360, and PC)

Lets assume that they all sold equally so 440k/3 = 147k roughly
Lets take their 95% figure, if 5% of the playing the game "legitimately" is 147k then the 95% would be 2,739,000 people.

These sales figures were for the US only also. That is 2.739 mil people who pirated Max Payne in it's first month in the US.

Granted... all numbers are most likely skewed.. I still call massive bullshit.

 

[thespyder]

I find the article (un)surprisingly lacking in actual facts to support conclusions. The conclusions are clearly designed to support the business proposal to do more FTP games. But I don't see any actual facts supporting the stance.

For instance, the 95% figure may be based on projected or anticipated sales. Which may in turn be based on unrealistic market expectations. it may also encompass after market sales (being considered as pirated) and/or a set cost per unit ( which doesn't translate across markets). And I am sure that it is broad market, rather than focusing on any individual territory or demographic. For instance, the assumption that if country A buys 100 copies, that all countries are anticipated as buying at least 100 copies and other such spurious concepts. Even then the number seems extremely high.

But then again, with the complete lack of actual hard figures, it is pretty clear that this is a marketing ploy to make a business case for FTP. If they were required to nail down their assumptions, I am sure that quite a lot of them would be, if not wholly inaccurate, at least greatly exaggerated. It's a typical marketing game.

 

[lupi]

Obviously they are right, which means if piracy was eliminated the last cod title would have pulled in over 15 billion.

 

[Kalmah]

My personal experience with piracy goes one of two ways:

1) Download torrent. Wow, this game is awesome. Buy from Steam/Amazon.
or
2) Download torrent. Wow, I'm glad I didn't waste $60 on this steaming pile of $#!%.

There are only 2-3 titles a year that I buy on release day without trying first, not counting all the $3.00-9.99 Steam games that I buy on a whim.

I think (and hope) that a lot of people approach it like I do.

This is exactly where I've always stood. There are many games that I never even would have considered buying but did because of this. These last couple of years though I've steered away from torrents as they seem to be more aggressive about making ISPs report your usage lately. So now, there are games that I would have tried and possibly purchased but was afraid to try them, therefor no purchase.

I'd like to compile a list of games that were purchased because of prior torrent downloads but the list goes back so far I can't really recall much.

 

[ImpulsE69]

This is exactly where I've always stood. There are many games that I never even would have considered buying but did because of this. These last couple of years though I've steered away from torrents as they seem to be more aggressive about making ISPs report your usage lately. So now, there are games that I would have tried and possibly purchased but was afraid to try them, therefor no purchase.

I'd like to compile a list of games that were purchased because of prior torrent downloads but the list goes back so far I can't really recall much.

Likewise. These days I pretty much figure if I can get it for $5-10 I'm ok with "the loss" if it sucks. I will not pay $60 unseen for a game anymore. Not because of lack of funds, but lack of quality from game companies. They do not care about their consumers, Wall Street ruins companies. Once it's about profit margins and growth and shareholder dividends, it's all downhill for anything "creative". The over hyped piracy rate is just one more way of trying to deflect the real reason for loss of revenue.

 

[thespyder]

My personal experience with piracy goes one of two ways:

1) Download torrent. Wow, this game is awesome. Buy from Steam/Amazon.
or
2) Download torrent. Wow, I'm glad I didn't waste $60 on this steaming pile of $#!%.

There are only 2-3 titles a year that I buy on release day without trying first, not counting all the $3.00-9.99 Steam games that I buy on a whim.

I think (and hope) that a lot of people approach it like I do.

The problem is, most publishers see scenario 2 as lost profit and calculate that into their 'Pirated' sales. If you hadn't torrented the game, you wouldn't know it was crap and would have to shell out the money to them to find that out. Hence they lost out on a potential sale. The fact that they make crap games, and lose sales because of that doesn't factor into their equation.

they also consider poor sales due to crap reviews to equate to a certain amount of piracy. They figure that people will not pay full price based on the review so they "Project" that a certain percentage will torrent or otherwise pirate the game anyway. it is a great way to bolster support for whatever DRM scheme they want to put forward.

To better understand how these executives calculate lost profit, watch this video

http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html

 

[Texashiker]

Developers make sorry games = pirated, people do not pay for crap products.

Developers make quality games = bought, people are willing to buy a good product.

How many records did diablo iii set? What about left 4 dead 2? How many people are paying for world of warcraft every month?