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Ubisoft Blames Piracy For Non-Release of PC Game
New submitter Azmodan sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"Ubisoft is known for laying the blame for many problems on the unauthorized downloading of its games. Stanislas Mettra, creative director of the upcoming game I Am Alive, confirms this once again by saying that the decision not to release a PC version is a direct result of widespread game piracy. However, those who look beyond the propaganda will see that there appears to be more to the story than that."
Another Ubisoft employee made similar comments about upcoming Ghost Recon games. Regarding Ghost Recon Online being free-to-play: "We are giving away most of the content for free because there’s no barrier to entry. To the users that are traditionally playing the game by getting it through Pirate Bay, we said, 'Okay, go ahead guys. This is what you’re asking for. We’ve listened to you – we’re giving you this experience. It’s easy to download, there’s no DRM that will pollute your experience.'" Regarding Future Soldier having no PC version: "When we started Ghost Recon Online we were thinking about Ghost Recon: Future Solider; having something ported in the classical way without any deep development, because we know that 95% of our consumers will pirate the game. So we said okay, we have to change our mind."
All this means is that Ubisoft makes me proud to never have pirated or bought any of their games. Apparently they are of so low quality that they themselves does not belive in them.
DIE a SLOW and PAINFUL bleeding death ubisoft.
Ubisoft has gotten itself into such a complete knicker-twist over the PC games market via its groteseque DRM efforts that it wishes to give up on the whole affair as a bad job. But, like the classic stroppy teenager, it wishes to make clear to all and sundry that it's not being sent home in disgrace, it's making its own decision, for its own reasons, to take its ball and go home.
I am not an anti-DRM fundamentalist. I'm fine with the DRM requirements imposed by the base Steam DRM package, by Xbox Live, and with the exception of a few games (like Bionic Commando), by PSN. That's not to say I am in love with the idea of DRM or even accept it as inevitable. I like the concept behind GoG - particularly of extending it to newer games - and support them where I can. But I'm not going to boycott games over DRM on the basis of an abstract principle. I'm only going to do so where the DRM inconveniences me personally. And Ubisoft's always-on DRM system is the only one (leaving aside a few small EA experiments such as C&C4) to have passed that barrier. My connection tends to blip and reset itself every couple of days - losing 20 minutes of play-time because of it is not acceptable.
And because it's so offensive, I didn't limit the boycott to not just buying the games on the PC. I skipped the games across all platforms. No Assassin's Creed for me? It's a bit of a pity, but I'll live. I mean, really, I'm not the kind of gamer it's a fantastic idea to be upsetting. I buy 30+ games per year (as you can see from the end-of-year roundups I do in my journal). The last game I pirated was the original Crimson Skies, back in 2000 (and I went on to buy that a month or two later). I always buy new, not second hand, except on the odd occasion when I hear about an old game that I "missed" at release which really appeals to me, and which I can't find new). I'm not sat there moaning about the lack of Linux ports and boycotting anything that has even a sniff of a CD-key. I want to be reasonable.
The Mettra comments appear to be based on faulty data on PC game sales. They're going only on boxed-copy sales, which have been declining on PC for a decade or more now. What isn't declining are download sales, primarily through Steam but also through a variety of other sources. Even going off simultaneous players-online stats (which will substantially under-estimate actual copies sold), the PC version of Skyrim shifted some pretty epic numbers via Steam.
It's a slight pity in this case. I Am Alive looks fairly interesting and it's pitched at a price point that tends to fare reasonably well on the PC. But can I live without it? Sure...
Besides, as we drift to the end of this console cycle, the PC is not the only platform with a piracy problem. Ok, the PS3 has always remained difficult from a piracy perspective. And the 360, while easily hackable, does carry a very high risk of getting an XBL ban. But the Wii, DS, 3DS(?) and PSP are all pretty much wide open these days (and have been for a while in some cases).
PS. This story has been carried across multiple mainstream gaming media outlets over the last few days - Kotaku, Eurogamer, IGN, 1up etc. Could we try to get a link in TFA that is to a site that won't be blocked by most common workplace filters (ie. not TorrentFreak)?
Any chance for statistics backing the 95% number? How many of those pirates actually played the game for more than an hour?
Just be honest and say that the console players will put up with worse games and more expensive games.
At what point do investors realize that digital games and feature films are an excessive risk and stop funding developers and studios?
For delaying the cracks for better games.
How's a guy supposed to pirate and play the latest GoodPCGame_X if all of the crackers and scene releases are busy spending their time mocking Ubisoft with pre-release cracks?
Easily the most terrifying and effective of anti-piracy measures: Flooding the pros with entertaining shit to do.
Yet somehow in this environment full of pirates, Call of Duty manages to make a billion dollars, Skyrim manages to make over 450 million dollars, etc. Ubisoft is full of shit and their games stopped being good a long time ago. Come to think of it no, SSI was good. But who the hell is Ubisoft? Ahh yes, they wanted to become another EA studio-devouring machine. Well the experiment has failed.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Maybe you could give people an incentive to actually buy a PC game? First step would be to stop releasing broken-ass console ports to the PC market, I bet that would help sales a lot. Also, get rid of any additional software to run, i.e., Steam and the other ridiculous spyware crap that is bundled with so many PC games today.
Maybe it looks like f***cking shit compared to BF3...
And Ubisoft knows it.
The fact that many games (including this one) does not sell well among PC gamers is no secret. I don't like Ubisoft because they do lots of bad ports and put very aggressive DRM on some of their games, but right now I can't blame them for being realistic. This is no WoW, no StarCraft, no Minecraft, its one of those games that can sell tons on consoles but almost nothing on PCs. It's not like this is something new, the data is there, it's not an opinion. They know it isn't going to sell well in the PC platform and I don't think you can blame them for not throwing money at a risky move right away.
"They've broken everything else, so we've moved to the scorched earth policy. Let's see them pirate a game that doesn't exist!"
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
The real reason is that a game dumbed down for console players won't sell well on PC.
I mean, does anyone ever gain increased profit from the complaining? Then why do it? It just encourages me to never even try any of their games.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Um, no. This seems to be a common meme on slashdot, but it has very little to do with reality. While the increased number of possible graphics cards/hardware configs of PCs are a problem, the cost of supporting them is dwarfed by the license costs for consoles. Anyone can release a game on Windows/OS X and not pay Microsoft or Apple a dime, but you cannot release a game on a console without giving Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo a cut of your revenue. Long story short companies that don't release games for the PC aren't doing so because they simply don't think it will sell for whatever reasons. If companies thought they could sell as many copies of a game released only on the PC as they could console games you bet they would release more for the PC even if it requires spending a little bit more on doing QA.
Monstar L
They should take a leaf out of the Valve Software marketing handbook.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/25/gabe-newell-on-piracy-and-steams-success-in-russia/
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Less competition on the PC means more PC games by other publishers and indie game developers.
so Ubi calls the vast majorty of us pc gamers THIEVES and then they expect us (the non pirate ones) to support them? wow! now that's the most weird customer loyalty tactic I have ever seen. reverse psychology perhaps?
What I'd like to see, and something that games companies never seem to provide, is how the sales on each platform stack up against one another.
People say that PC games sell well on Steam (such as Skyrim), but I'd love to see the total sales to date, and how those sales stack up on the PC, the Xbox and the PS3.
After that, maybe we'll get better clarity on why companies seem to be walking away from the PC more and more these days.
Note - I used to game on PC about 10 years ago, but bought into a PS1 to play FF7. I now game exclusively on consoles, since... well, I just find the breadth of games on offer is higher (I imagine that comment will get some people's hackles up, but you simply don't get games like God of War 3, Uncharted, Vanquish or Dark Souls on Windows...)
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I guess BF3 should have sold 100 million copies and MW should have sold 200 million copies? Oh, those are multiplayer games you say? Skyrim should have sold 68 million copies then?
( Note: these are launch day sales )
How about you make a great game, price is appropriately and it will sell itself.
Besides, looking at myself, I've stopped pirating when I grew older and started earning some real money. I still won't buy Skyrim for €50, but I've grown so old I don't care anymore that I don't get to play the latest and greatest. I'll buy it once it reaches the price I want to pay for it. You are complaining that your cash strapped audience isn't spending it's money on you, fine, having them spend it in smaller amounts might work it might not. It still doesn't disqualify the old (and my preferred) way of selling a game.
See ya Ubi, won't be missing you. Your games are really nothing special anymore and your insistence on requiring your own DRM service ON TOP OF STEAM is just ridiculous. I won't log in twice and maintain separate accounts for you anymore. Likewise, I won't have to lose access to my games when not online (something that Steam is frequently accused of, but MOST games can be played offline on Steam after the initial download and activation).
You look at a PC market where other companies are making millions in SALES and blame piracy for your woes. I haven't bought an Ubi game since the last Splinter Cell, I must be pirating your crap now right? Wrong, I'm just spending my money on games from other publishers. Take your ball and go home, I didn't even know you had a ball anymore.
You're not actually wrong as such, but there's a bit more complexity here than your post acknowledges.
There are indeed licensing costs associated with the consoles. However, these are habitually passed directly on to the consumer. In the UK, for example, the console-manufacturer's slice on a newly released game tends to be £10. This is why a new PC game in the UK will retail for £30, while the same game, released for the consoles in the same week, will be on sale at £40.
The additional development/testing costs associated with the development of a PC version, however, tend to be borne by the developer directly.
Ubisoft is a terrible company, most of their games are bugged mess with monstruous DRM that no one on their right minds would ever pay for them: do you really think you're losing money because people pirate your games? Do you even think these people would even buy them if they couldn't pirate them? Take the last HOMM game, for example: a terrible, dumbed down version of a once great series: frankly, the only way peple are going to play that is pirating them. How come Skyrim, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Crysis and other AAA titles on the PC still manage to sell? Because they are *good* games. Stop trying to make yourself look good: The Wii must be the most pirated platform of all time, yet it's by far the most succesfull one in terms of money. You're just being thick now.
Oblivion Awaits
Yes, yes, Its the piracy. Its got nothing at all to do with you pumping out more shovelware than Ames used to way back when...
They do know it's easier to pirate console games than it is PC games? All current-gen consoles now have some form of custom firmware that allows you to run pirated games. And its easier to do than pirating PC games.
Wasn't Ubi's absurd DRM supposed to fix this piracy thing? I guess it didn't work, and rather then admit that it drove all the paying customers away instead they want to say that somehow it failed and everybody pirated everything.
News flash - Your DRM sucks. I still haven't bought Settlers 7 because of it, and I likely never will. Another game got that money instead.
But I guess there's too many MBAs working there to figure out something so simple.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
http://gamingbolt.com/gabe-newell-piracy-is-a-non-issue-to-valve-providing-better-services-will-result-in-more-sales
The thing is... pirates are not your customers, are a pool of people that may or may not buy your stuff, but your market is the people that buy games. This is obvious for a lot of people now, and for some of then, is a way to make a lot of money. Valve is swimming of money because understand this. Ubisoft is full of retards that can't understand this.
-Woof woof woof!
They're like, to borrow a similie, the suicide jumper standing at the top of a tall building, threatening to jump while shouting incoherently. Except they never fucking jump! They just hang around the edge, trying to get attention from passers by. By lamely taunting them. "You sir, you're a THIEF and I'm going to JUMP! That's right.. walk away.. theif! I'm JUMPING?! YOU HEAR ME?"
Look, if you don't want to develop actual PC games that PC gamers like, then we're all OK with you bowing out. One day your "innovative" DRM has cured the piracy problem and you're very happy, the next day 95% of your customers are thieves and to blame for games not being released. Okay... but either way, if you don't like it WHY DON'T YOU FUCKING STOP? Just fucking leap already you schizophrenic pieces of shit! That way you don't have to complain about piracy any more, in your non-piracy console nirvana where all the money is.
I'm sure if it's like you say, that there are no money in the PC market, then your stock should rise once you declare your intention to stop developing PC titles. Right? SO WHY DON'T YOU?
You've taken your dump. Now take your spades and pot and get out of the fucking sandbox.
Next time someone bring up "the self-entitled whiny PC-gamers", think about these guys. Right, us players are the whiners?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
If 95% of their customers are pirating the game, something is very, very wrong with their marketing. Pirating games isn't as easy as that for a regular user. The question I have then is: is there anyone playing games on PC that isn't an advanced user? It's true that most PCs come with Intel Graphics, which won't play these games. Someone that can install a graphics card can probably pirate a game. But that said there are plenty of gaming rigs for under $400 (which isn't much more than a game console these days). Plus there's tonnes of WOW players that paid for graphics upgrades, and have dropped the WOW habit. These guys aren't going to be pirating anything. I guess you could say it's a tough market because they don't want to play games right now, but really it's the job of sales and marketing to make them want to :).
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i dont understand the quote "95% of OUR customers"? are these people who have previously purchased their games and are now downloading them? I think its safe to say that not everyone who illegally downloads a game would have actually went out and purchased it. the fact that someone is getting it easily and for free can be reason enough for them to download it. so if they're saying that the number of people downloading illegally makes up 95% of their active installs of a game, this doesn't necessarily make all these installs lost customers to piracy...
I bet if someone could go buy the game for $5 it wouldn't be worth the trouble to wait for a big ass download. They would just go buy it. Making millions of dollars on top of millions of dollars on top of millions of dollars on every game isn't possible. Buying a game for $60+, jumping through DRM hoops to get it installed, having to drag out DVD's to play it, and the game turning out to suck isn't sufficient incentive to buy games. Even if the game was the be all to end all it isn't worth it to kids who have less money than parents who are damn near broke these days too. Rumor has it cheap phone games are selling hot and heavy. Get a clue. People buy pirated goods because the originals are too expensive. Nobody is going to pirate something if they loose money. Nobody is going to by a knockoff if the original is affordable. Quit trying to be a billionaire off the backs of people with $2 in the bank.
Now get off my lawn you DRM loving MAFIAA cock suckers!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
DRM that will pollute your experience
At least they admit DRM is shitty.
I am the 5%.
Not to Ubisoft, though. I don't know the last time I bought an Ubisoft title. Quite frankly, none of their games are all that interesting, and I'm not taking my chances with their DRM, either. I've got all of this generation's consoles, but really, if you're going to fuck with one platform, you kind of fucked with me regardless. Real smooth, Ubisoft.
Anyway, I kind of knew that Ubisoft's DRM scheme was all for the purpose of pushing to console-only development. I guess they'll save money by removing a platform from their development cycles (the way consoles are now, optimizing for them to get what we have now graphically isn't an easy task) and they won't have to worry about piracy anymore - Except they probably aren't actually losing an appreciable number of sales to piracy to begin with anyway.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Well in the US the price of the games are usually the same, but there is a difference that your post helped me to realize, the costs with licensing are based on how many copies you sell, however the extra costs associated with PCs are sunk by the time the game is released, whether it sells well or not.
Monstar L
If companies thought they could sell as many copies of a game released only on the PC as they could console games you bet they would release more for the PC even if it requires spending a little bit more on doing QA.
I think it's more that the companies know that they can't sell ridiculous reskins for $2 a pop to the PC market.
This is why the major developers love the console market. Also why they're starting to move to the Facebook and mobile game markets. They want to cash in on the millions of people that say "Eh, $2 isn't that much." Next thing you know they've sunk $100 into new buildings for their farm.
While it may not be specified, a large part of their conclusions should (but probably aren't; they're lairs, after all) be based off of the asset worth of programmers/developers, who are worth more working on "new" projects.
That is to say, a shelf in a grocery store holding items with a $1 profit IS profitable, but it's "unprofitable" compared to if it was holding items with a $2 profit.
How about:
- stop doing remakes of Doom/Quake/Unreal. A first-person shooter is a first-person shooter. Yes you can change the maps, the guns, the enemies and the plot all you want but at the end of the day it's all the same game.
- stop adding too much complexity and stop porting games from consoles without thinking about the controls. Don't tell me to press "Yellow button X" or "Triangle" when I'm on a computer. I'm using a keyboard and a mouse here, not a damn Xbox gamepad. Also, no option to invert the Y axis is a deal killer. I've been using inverted Y axis for over 20 years now, asking me to use regular Y axis is like asking me to drive a car and turn left to go right.
- about 10% of the market is now using Macs. But those stupid numbers are from sales and people with a Mac don't upgrade as often, so the actual installed base is probably a lot higher. Game not available on Mac OS X = no sale.
- a lot of your past customers are now older, have a family, maybe kids. Less time to play games.
- Given the choice, people who play games such as WoW probably wouldn't play your games even if they were free because the time they have for gaming will all get used by WoW/etc.
It's all the pirates fault, and has nothing to do with buggy games and utterly obnoxious DRM.
I refuse to buy Ubisoft stuff because I refuse to jump through their nonsensical hoops. Meanwhile, I've spent more money on Steam than I have my entire life before. The prices are far more reasonable, they back up my game data, and if I switch platforms I don't have to re-buy the game again. The value I get out of steam is absolutely immense.
Now say it with me:
You give me value, I give you money.
If you give me what only you perceive to be value, along with a ginormous stick to whack me over the head with, I give you my middle finger.
See how this works?
Tell me, does this stem from you have played a lot of space sims/Joystick games?
Just curious.
I don't want your god damned FTP CoD-bomination Ghost Recon.
I want the original, tactical, slow paced and stressing Rainbow 6 clone.
Look past the rhetoric for a moment - 90% of the comments here are going to be pointing out that people don't buy Ubi games for other reasons, or that piracy doesn't account for lost sales to the degree that they're saying, or that this or that DRM is better. Just stop and think about what's going on for a moment: piracy is common on the PC. Prior to the internet it was an issue but not a showstopper, easy file distribution has made it much more pervasive. We can all agree, at least, that piracy is prevalent, whether or not you agree that it is a problem. We can also all agree, I hope, that piracy via internet distribution ignores software DRM, games are cracked and uploaded within hours. Only hardware DRM (consoles) has shown itself to be an effective deterrent.
Okay, so that's the setup. Now let's assume that management at Ubi is not stupid. It's hard, the impulse is to think that these people are being honest when they blame piracy for this sort of behavior - they just can't put together the above reasoning for themselves and if only someone would talk to them and show them that their draconian DRM isn't helping and is, in fact, driving away the vocal minority... No. They're not stupid, they know this. So now we have to speculate: what are they really doing?
One possibility is that while their DRM doesn't effect the bulk of people who do their pirating via the internet, it may deter the old style of piracy - passing the disc to your friend. That's the most generous interpretation that I can think of but it seems improbable, local piracy is a tiny fraction of the total. Another far more likely possibility is that it's there to keep you from giving the game to your friend or selling it used. A few high-ups in the industry have come out against used sales but that generates a lot of heat from the public, people get angry when you tell them what they can and can't do with their stuff, so piracy works as a convenient excuse to suppress the used games market. A third possibility is that they're styling themselves after Blizzard with Diablo 3: it's not about piracy or used sales, it's about controlling those people who purchased the game - ensuring an ongoing revenue stream through an in-game store by preventing them from installing mods or tampering with the market that they've set up.
Now, given all that, why are they taking their ball and going home? I'm guessing that they aren't. This is a publicity stunt and they'll be back to releasing PC games in the future, only they're hoping that by drawing attention to it in this way they'll get less flack for their DRM. People will point and say, "Well, at least we're getting something. Damn pirates forcing poor Ubisoft to use this horrible activation scheme." In other words they're not doing this because of piracy, they're doing this to try to convince us to accept their DRM.
That Skyrim's first major graphics mod will make it look better than anything Ubisoft releases in the next ten years.
Hell, there's Oblivion graphic mods that make it look better than anything Ubisoft have released yet.
Ubisoft is the company known for the worst DRM in the world. I've had so many of their games become virtually unplayable due to the DRM. I refuse to buy any of their games any more, period. They can blame piracy all they want, but the fact is, I know a lot of people that are now intentionally boycotting their products.
In order to "recover" from their image, they kept touting this game or that game that are shipped DRM free -- frankly, we don't care. We've been screwed by you guys far, far too often to trust anything you release. It doesn't matter to me that they come out with an occasional DRM free game. The company's ethos is corrupt, and frankly, I don't have any intention of buying anything from them in the future.
P.S. My list of games on Steam is over 140 *paid* titles. I buy lots and lots of games. Just nothing from UBIsoft any more. *NOTHING*.
One of these days i'm going to find this 'peer' guy and reset HIS connection!
Really? Whenever I'm in the US, PC games always seem to be cheaper than their console equivalents there as well.
The really interesting thing about the console license fee is what this means for the economics of the console manufacturers. Every copy of a third party game sold is basically "pure" profit for the console manufacturer. The only expenses they've put in are the (trivial) costs of providing the dev-kits early in the console cycle and some (also fairly trivial) certification costs. All of the cost and the risk rests with the third party developer.
A first-party game gives a bigger cash return on each copy sold to the console developer. This is good and if the game is a mega-success, that's fine. But it's still true that far more games lose money than make them - and all three console developers have had failures as well as successes with first party games over the last few years. By contrast, every third party game released on your platform is "free money", even if the game is a failure that the developer loses money on.
This is why Sony's gaming division made bucketloads of money on the previous console cycle, particularly in the late-cycle. It's also why despite healthy profits from strong Wii sales early in the cycle, Nintendo's finances are pretty miserable as we go into the late-cycle this time around (while the gaming divisons of MS and Sony are doing pretty well, despite struggling earlier in the cycle). A large installed base is good - but not necessarily just in its own right. It's good if you can leverage it into third party development interest and third party game sales.
The PC, meanwhile, has nobody who automatically creams off a percentage of every sale made (though there are systems that third party developers can choose of their own volition to use which will, such as Steam or Games for Windows). That's a big advantage for the platform from the third party developer's point of view. The corresponding downside - again from the developer's point of view (from the user's point of view, some of this is upside) - is that the platform also lacks a champion; somebody to promote broader interest in it and enforce and manage technical standards.
Steam's been around since... what... 2004? Its DRM requirements have not gotten any more restrictive over that span. In fact, the "play offline" feature works much better and more consistently than it used to, so if anything it's become less restrictive.
I used to love not only computer games, but also those "cool" people who made it. It no longer feels like that. Where are they?
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
I honestly would like to see how much console games sell vs PC games. Saying how much of that is due to piracy, I'm afraid, is impossible unless you come up with a model which is better than the download=lost sale model, which is absurdly broken. I know vgchartz isn't a very reliable source, but according to that site, the super-top-selling game franchise CoD sells 20M. This is a non-trivial delta. Now, maybe Steam accounts for most downloads and those don't show up in vgchartz. I honestly don't know. As I said, I would like to see some real data about sales of PC vs console. But given the a-priori data I am seeing, I would not be surprised to see that the PC has, in fact, become a very different gamer audience.
I honestly would like to see how much console games sell vs PC games. Saying how much of that is due to piracy, I'm afraid, is impossible unless you come up with a model which is better than the download=lost sale model, which is absurdly broken.
I know vgchartz isn't a very reliable source, but according to that site, the super-top-selling game franchise CoD sells 20M. This is a non-trivial delta.
Now, maybe Steam accounts for most downloads and those don't show up in vgchartz. I honestly don't know. As I said, I would like to see some real data about sales of PC vs console. But given the a-priori data I am seeing, I would not be surprised to see that the PC has, in fact, become a very different gamer audience.
(sorry, last post got corrupted due to the use of > and HTML being on)
if that's the case, the question I have is why? 95% of computer users do not have the skills needed to pirate a video game. You have to download and install bit torrent, go to one of the sites, wade though the viruses and dead files, download & burn the game, install the game, open and read the install how to (which often has to be opened manually in a text editor), and follow the instructions.
Someone who can do all that is a very advanced computer users (don't laugh, I'm talking about the aggregate whole of all users). Assuming that Ubisoft's figures are correct, the only people left playing PC games are highly advanced users. If we assume this is true, then I want to ask why. Two possibilities are:
1. The technical barrier to entry for PC gaming is too high. If we assume that to play PC games you need to install a new graphics card (not an unreasonable assumption: most games come with an Intel Graphics adapter that can barely run WoW) then this could be true.
2. All non-Technical PC gamers have jumped ship to consoles or MMORPGs (the WoW effect).
Regarding # 1, there are still millions of PCs being sold with entry level ATI & nVidia graphics, which is more than enough to play games. That wasn't true 10 years ago, but the state of PC graphics has been stalled by console porting. Regarding # 2, well, there's something to that. But I would argue it's the job of Ubisoft's PC marketing team to make these people want to play games, and they're not doing a very good job. Note that I'm not talking about the game studios themselves, but the marketers. The key to marketing is to make people want to do something they didn't want to do before. Not necessarily something they'd never do, but something they would be disposed to doing given the proper message / incentives.
I guess what it sounds like to me is this: Ubisoft is just throwing up their hands and giving up.
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There's a bigger issue: why the fuck is everybody porting console games to PC?
Where did the cutting edge go?
I look at graphics comparisons of X360 vs PS3 vs PC and you know what? They look almost the same. Sure, you have better resolution, slightly more detailed textures, more FPS on PC, but what the fuck? Consoles have 2005-era hardware. PC games should be crushing console games in terms of graphics.
What the fuck has happened?
Sorry for the f's - but this thing boggles my mind to the point my head nearly explodes.
Why do they need more than 2 years copyright, then?
Dear Ubisoft, allow me to make this an open letter. To be copied as anyone sees fit.
You claim that it's "piracy" (I'll use the term as loosely here as you do) is the reason you do not sell your games. And hey, I won't even doubt that. But let's ask for a moment, why do people copy your games rather than buy them? Is it because of the monetary incentive? Sure, for some it is. Or is it because it's simply the smarter decision?
Let's be blunt and honest here: Buying an UBIsoft game is, in a word, stupid. Simple as that. I was lucky to avoid this mistake in the more recent past when you went completely nuts with the crippling of your content, but I had to see friends suffer at your hand. Buying content for quite a bit of money that simply doesn't work. Because the game was flawed? Because it had bugs? Because it wasn't compatible with some piece of hardware? Because of any other reason we've seen in the past? No. Because you deliberately introduced some part that made it flawed and that made it cease to work at random. Be it because of copy protection that simply freaks out and trashes parts of the system, be it because of the harebrained idea that even for a single player game a constant (and stable) connection to you is required or be it for all the other not so understandable reasons, all in the name of the holy DRM.
And here's the big difference to the game crashes of the old days, the crashes that were due to bugs and incompatibilities: They didn't happen in cracked versions. In a cracked version, all the artificially introduced crashing reasons were fixed. I use that term in the usual sense of the computer world. They were repaired. At least from the user's point of view, this was actually a bugfix. It removed a bug that kept them from playing.
This was actually the first time where removing the DRM had a direct and positive influence on the playability of a game. Yes, earlier DRM mechanisms also crapped out from time to time, but in general, cracked versions proved to be less stable and more prone to problems, if no later than with the next patch. This was the introduction of DRM that had a serious impact, not on some but on many customers, who could instantly see how not buying but copying that game removes all the problems they have.
Then why does this surface now? Because it took people a while to notice it. You could easily sell a few titles with this kind of copy protection before the majority of your customers was pissed and before the majority was looking for a cure of the problem. Cracking and copying hasn't been a widespread problem for people who don't care about money 'til now. And even in these times, people do spend money on leisure activities and on entertainment, they actually do buy games. Just not YOUR games anymore. Now, I can't vouch for them copying those games, but answer me one question: Would you drop 50+ bucks on something from a company that has proven to you that buying their stuff nets you frustration instead of entertainment? Many of these people who did buy your games learned that they're better off not buying them, that copying your games is pretty much the only way to get the experience they were looking for. Not because of the money, not because they want to "stick it to da man", not because it's cool or fancy, simply because you don't deliver what the cracked version does: A game that works.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How long before we have " I am the 95%" protests?
Ubisoft games have been almost universally crap lately anyway. Gone are the days of things like the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time games or even the original Assasin's Creed. Instead they just rehash the same thing that did moderately well umpteen times (later PoP games, Assasin's Creed, etc). Don't get me started on EA/Activision with Call of Duty and Battlefield but that's another topic altogether.
I used to be a pretty big fan of Ubisoft. They've lost my favor with their aggressive DRM and lack of originality.
Not that they care about my opinion, but my opinion is starting to become the norm. Ubisoft should stay on consoles. It's where they belong now. I'm not losing any sleep over it.
2-4 degrees (f) doesn't seem like a lot, but remember how you feel when your body temperature goes from (f) 98.6, to 101
What is actually happening here is developers develop for a console. The console's technology by its standardization will be 5+ years old. You then port said game to a PC using not only current technology, but technology that was quite a bit better even 5+ years ago. A combination of the fact of designing for the lowest common denominator, along with controls being ported from a simplistic controller, and doing so as an afterthought, and you get a game that is a steaming pile of crap. Now add a healthy dose of crippling DRM to totally destroy what little marketing value you had left. Now act surprised when you charge 70$ for the title in store for a mature PC market, and they turn out in droves to not buy it. Likely much of the "pirating" are people downloading it to see what a POS it is before deciding to spend their hard earned cash on your steaming pile of garbage. Now say you are getting out of "PC development" due to piracy. Sorry, you moved to console development a long time ago at the expense of PC development. If you want your argument to hold any water, develop the PC version first and port it to consoles, otherwise shut the hell up. Piracy's fault indeed.
Story has already changed by the time it was posted to slashdot.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/25/i-am-alive-might-yet-be-alive-on-pc
We need to get a volunteer team of skilled programmers to pirate and port their non-PC games to the PC. Yes I know the games suck, but it would be fun to release out into the PC-gaming world a UBISOFT title that wasn't sold to PC's because of the "piracy".
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
I got a stack of CD's somewhere of all the games I bought, it is about a meter high. Just the CD's, no cases. I threw the big box of floppies away. 3.5 inch mostly, I am not THAT old... yes... I also had tapes once... guess I am that old.
Anyway, I once bought games. Like say... Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe by a company called LucasGames. Heard of them? It came with a book you could kill a fairly large spider with. X-wing? Came with a pamflet. Later CD games? PDF on the CD.
There used to be a time you got maps, maybe a thin figure, stickers, a MANUAL. Something IN the box. They stopped doing that and then stopped giving you a box. Saved space on the shelve... yes it did. Do you know how I save even more space? By downloading.
There used to be a time when games were FINISHED when you downloaded them and they had WEEKS of gameplay. Take X-Wing, there was no way you could complete it. And when you were ready for more after say half a year, there was an expansion pack with a complete new campaign and a new plane. It had WEIGHT.
Nowadays? Oblivion and the horse armour... Dragon Age and the gift pack. Just a few dialog lines extra for 5 bucks...
If you courted your girlfriend and had sex with her, then a dinner for a blowjob is an okay deal. But if she then expects after all that courting she demands a diamond ring in exchange for a link to her pics online so you can go whack off, you feel a bit cheated.
Here are some recent games I downloaded and STILL wanted my money back:
Driver San Francisco. My god, have you EVER heard of a difficulty mode? And how about the option to skip some stuff. Non-linear my ass. A hub in which you got to all the sub-hubs is not non-linear. I don't enjoy timed races where it is obvious the driver who set the time had a better setup then me and better reflexes (I will get to this later if you are still reading this)
Skyrim. Can the interface be any more pathetic? Is it possible to have any lower res textures? Can game designers FINALLY start coding for machine with more then 2gb of memory as in 64 bit?
Remember the bit about the reflexes? What are most of the pirated games aimed at? EA does just FINE with The Sims. MAYBE Ubisoft shouldn't make so many testosterone filled teenage boy games and aim their games at a more mature audience. I still play games AND I can easily afford them. Special edition for an extra hundred (if it is available, Skyrim special edition didn't go on sale in Holland), I lap it up. I got the money you want. But I am not interested in yet another dystopian FPS.
It is very easy to blame piracy but there are two reasons people pirate. Because they can't afford your game or because the game doesn't interest them enough to buy it. I often fall in the last class. Driver I played for maybe two hours and then gave up. Nice enough but clearly not aimed at my old ass. So, I don't buy it, just play the extended demo courtesy of the pirate bay for a laugh.
Get some good, fully made for the PC games out and not aimed at 12yr old boys and you will make it big. Ask EA.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There are some ethical considerations regarding piracy and intellectual property that are fun and interesting to talk about. However, looking at it pragmatically, Ubisoft games are just poor value for the consumer. They price their games at the same price as their competitors, but package the game with always-on DRM. The consumer is getting less for their money and have taken their business elsewhere.
If Ubisoft really wants to have always-on DRM, when none of their competitors have it, then they will have to either lower the price or create the greatest games in the world. You can't expect to be successful when you're selling an inferior product in a crowded marketplace. Furthermore, at the same time, they are aggravating their customers by starting a public morality debate (that nobody really wanted to have) and taking a hard-line stance that is generally the opposite of how their customers feel (according to their own quotes).
In short, Ubisoft's PC games division has shown poor business-sense and poor customer relations. It was only a matter of time until they failed utterly.
I wont buy your shit anyway, if its not choked with DRM it barley fucking functions anyway
What game were you trying this with? (I want to know so I can avoid it!)
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
The big one is something another posted pointed out: Those are retail only sales. A lot of people on PC buy their games via digital download these days. Just ask Gabe Newell about that, he has gotten exceedingly rich off of that, and Steam isn't the only DD service. In particular, Skyrim probably sold a ton digital since it is a Steamworks game (meaning it needs Steam to play). Might as well get it on Steam, since that's what the retail copy uses anyhow. Skyrim peaked at more than 300,000 people playing it AT ONE TIME on Steam, so I'm going to guess more than 500k copies for the PC sold.
The other is that total numbers don't matter, it only matters that you make enough to justify the cost. After all if we went by your metric of "total numbers after 1 week of sales" then there should be no Skyrim for PS3. The 260 sold twice as many copies, so that should be the only platform right?
Nope, all that matters is you make enough to make it worth your while. So, presume PCs only did sell 500k copies. A standard retail markup is about 100%. It might be less for software, I don't know, but we'll assume 100% markup. That means Bethesda made $15 million on Skyrim for the PC so far. So long as their porting costs were a non-trivial amount below that amount, it was worth doing. If they spent $5 million on the PC version (which is unlikely it was most likely much less) then that is $10 million they walked away with already.
Then there's the fact that, no, PC are NOT more expensive to develop for. One big reason is licensing fees. Consoles take a cut, a non-trivial one, of every game you sell for licensing fees. It is how the companies make money. So $5-10 of every single copy sold goes to MS or Sony for the console versions. No such issue on the PC. You keep 100% of the profits.
Also porting from the PC to the 360 is quite easy. MS has seen to that. It isn't quite as simple as clicking "cross compile" but close. MS wants games on both platforms, and they make the tools to do it. The tools are also the same (Visual Studio) in both cases.
A more minor fact, but still one that matters too, is that digital distributors charge less than retail stores. Their markup is more like 25-30%. So for all the copies you sell there, you get even more money per sale.
This idea that the PC just isn't worth it is silly, and not backed up by reality. If it weren't, the why the hell are there so many PC games? Go to Metacritic and ask it for a list of releases for the PC. Have a look at the massive list in recent months. You think companies would keep doing it if there was no profit in it?
This is Ubisoft whining. Even they still do not just PC releases, but PC exclusives. They just released Anno 2070, a PC only strategy game. There is no console version, nor is there one planned (not the kind of game that would play well with a controller). Again, you think they'd do that if there was no money?
I skipped Assassin's Creed 2 because of the DRM. I didn't pirate it, just didn't play it. I don't lack for good games to play (I have a backlog of games, damn Steam sales) and I wasn't going to put up with always on DRM so I gave it a miss.
Looking to be the same thing for Anno 2070. Sounds like it is really well done and I like the Anno series but it uses a TAGES 3 machine activation deal. Well I'm not ok with that. Not that I want it on more than 3 computers, but that it only gives you 3 installs total, with no revocation. I'd eat that up easy, as I reinstall my system a minimum of each new Windows version, and usually more often because of new hardware.
So I'll probably have to give it a miss too. Too bad, I would have liked to play it but if they want to be dicks there is no lack of other companies that aren't who are waiting to take my money. Never mind the games I have a backlog of now (meaning I own but haven't yet played) I have a list of 10 other games I'd really like to get, but haven't because I have this backlog to play.
just going to the console manufacturers. On the PC you keep a lot more of your profits. Console makers generally take 30% off the top. If they could get away with it they'd raise the price for the console version higher. Yes, I realize steam takes a cut, but it's in line with the mark up from a retailer. I've heard from some of the indies it's less.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
that the pirated copies generate support costs that are hard to distinguish from legitimate customers. If someone emails you for support it can be hard to tell their fraudulent. I've read several of the indie guys complaining that they're servers & support forums get hammered by people they know pirated the game, but that it's not technically feasible to filter them out without lots & lots of false positives (which generate really nasty support calls).
As for the 95% figure, it's probably an exaggeration, but if you're wondering where they get figures from it'd be easy for them to make a guess based on the # of pirated copies being played online. The numbers would be off some (for the aforementioned false positives), but they'd be accurate enough for sales projections after a few years of data...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I would bet that practically all the revenue that is taken in for most movies, books, and music; is taken in within the first two years - certainly within five years.
You can suck my cock, and I can not buy your game. So there you go! You've successfully shot yourself in the foot and sucked a cock at the same time.
I am PC-only gamer that spends significant share of my discretionary income on my gaming hobby. I would buy any game that interests me, even if I don't see myself ever spending more than couple hours playing it. I never pirate, not because I don't know how to or afraid of being caught, but because it is not convenient and my time is better spent elsewhere. I generally tolerate bugs, release day patches, driver updates and all the usual crap that comes with PC gaming. What I won't ever tolerate is DRM that a) inconveniences me by putting limitations on how/when I play b) locks some aspect of use or negatively affects performance of my PC.
In my recent memory I skipped couple UBI titles that I'd loved to play solely due to DRM. Assassin's Creed with always online single player DRM, Might and Magic Heroes with crippled and incompatible offline mode or always online DRM.
Don't treat me as a pirate-in-waiting and you might get my money.
Talking about piracy when referring to shows aired for free on TV in a different country, and people devoting their time and effort to make quality subtitling often surpassing "professional" translation (ie Sekai no monshou/senki series) begs for silliness at best. Which is why I'm against the whole licensing thing (or cries about "stop distributing when licensed" junk).
For starters, Japanese animation studios barely ever take count of international exposure. They want their show success in their land and is paid by advertisers there already, period.
When someone imports a show taped from free to air tv of a foreign country, and even devotes his/her time/skills to add subtitles, for free; how can you claim "piracy"? It is unauthorised promotion at best...
Ah, but you might hurt the clueless American licensee wanting to sell DVDs... Who acted like 3 years late to begin with, added unwanted dubbing and bad translated subtitles. Well that is your problem in your country anyway (and the Japanese can't care the less either).
Crunchyroll is annoying. Just like that other tv show streaming thing nobody but US residents care about. Its restricted to few countries, perhaps only the US. Yet, they make appear shows are already "licensed" thus thwarting WORLD fansub distribution.
Ok, Crunchyroll killed a few quality fansub groups; fortunately other groups (outside US) emerged and restored the situation. Since Crunchyroll is only for Americans to begin with.
Also, and very importantly, not everyone can stream HD, or even SD in many places. It sucks with free services like youtube, I can't even imagine what someone would feel if using a paid streaming service, perhaps thru (paid) proxies to avoid that stupid US only mentality, often adding the ISP fee and the fact a foreign country with a much worse economy where every single of your dollars takes 10 times more effort to make.
Granted, if those with licenses are going to sue people left and right for something which is not even theirs to begin with (because an absurd legal system allows them to), a service like crunchy might seem preferable (just like some people find iTunes acceptable, even tho lossless drmless content is out there...).
However, as you can see in the many cases of shows NOT licensed (ie. not in crunchy) the torrents still beat the alternative, both in quality (720p and 1080 being common); good beyond professional translation (often including explanation for cultural differences) and availability (the day after it was aired). And, there is content you will NEVER be able to watch "legally" as the studio that made them is no more or doesn't want to license it.
I'm sure you can somehow extrapolate this to games. As the successful Valve's strategy in Russia shows. Steam, for starters, is not restricted to the US... And being able to pay in your local currency, with prices realistically adapted to your local economy, is a must. Hence, you see movie studios selling movies in China for 3$ when the unauthorised copies go for like .5$; still reaps far more profits than drming and suing everyone to death (which they can't in a country where they can't purchase enough politicians to do their laws).
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Well to be fair, Nintendo's problems aren't only game sales, they are also the insanely strong yen which is basically at an all time high. Unlike Sony Nintendo really hasn't done a very good job of spreading it's costs around geographically and thus is still beholden to the strength of the yen much more than Sony is. Also Sony can wait for the yen to drop off or can take it's Euros or dollars and invest them in other divisions, Nintendo being much smaller does not have this luxury.
Monstar L
OK sure, I know there are people that still figure out how to hack a copy of Angry Birds onto device X, but in general the makers of Angry Birds are very rich happy people compared to the people at Ubisoft. Two big reasons why nobody steals Angry Birds. First, there are free ad-subsidized versions of the app. When its free and you only have to put up with a few ads, then why bother with the hassle of trying to hack it onto your system. I know people hate ads, but whatever, free is free and I am enough of a free thinker that I don't have to buy something just because I saw an ad in Angry Birds. Secondly the non-ad version is cheap enough that only *ssholes won't separate with a few bucks for a decent game, and nobody likes being an *sshole. I am amazed at how the main-stream gaming industry still haven't caught on to the fact that nobody wants to pay $60 for a game anymore, which is why they are stolen. The only reason why next-gen gaming consoles are not even being announced (except for the stupid WiiU) is that Microsoft and Sony do not know how to compete in a reality where people do not buy $60 games any more. Consoles are sold at a lost and the loss is made up for through platform licensing. How do you make money on a platform selling $.99 games, well, ask Google and Apple because it is possible. There is also a myth that main-stream games NEED to cost a lot of money to produce and so that is why they cost a lot of money. If your game costs millions to produce, you need to change your business model. It shouldn't cost this much to produce any software, game or otherwise. Stop making a new game engine every release and start using one of the many widely available game engines which are cheap (or even free) to license, then all you are doing is largely modeling the game, artwork, music, and other stuff which should be relatively cheap. Why are iOS/Android games cheap or free?, because they are all sharing the same gaming engines so it comes down to spending a few months developing game content, which is cheap, period. Games like Angry Birds have over half a billion downloads, the most any main-stream game company can hope for selling a main stream game is maybe 20 million. Ubisoft et. al. need to get a clue and figure out how to compete in the 21st century gaming market and stop blaming piracy which is only a byproduct of not understanding the market they are selling to. Finally, why doesn't Chrome preserve my paragraphs?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The Yen isn't helping - very true. But the fact remains that Nintendo chose a "quick win" strategy for this console generation, while MS and (probably accidentally) Sony went for slower-burn strategies.
If Nintendo had the Wii-U ready to go for Christmas 2009 they would have been laughing. As it is, they are bowing out of another console gen sort-of looking like the losers, and if the Wii-U doesn't succeed in 2012 (which it probably won't, given the current economic climate) then they're fucked. Probably out of the home-console-hardware game for good.
Perhaps its more a matter of "Management has decided that we don't have the funds to support completing the game, and they are cancelling development on it". "Oh" says someone in Marketing, "can we make an announcement that its due to the level of piracy we are encountering and use that as a justification for our poor sales and raise the piracy issue again"?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I also think that Nintendo either didn't predict, or chose to ignore, the emerging smart phone/social network gaming trends. They basically put all their effort into trying to win the "casual games" market, only to lose that market to iOS, Android, and Facebook, competitors that basically didn't exist when the Wii and DS were first released.
Monstar L
Your statements are incorrect. You certainly can ask for the result of the work itself, which is how it's always been.
Also, people who create creative things work *once* but demand to be paid for each person who uses it, not an infinite amount of times. It's like saying Six Flags built an amusement park *once* but demands to be paid *infinite* times, for every person who comes to the park, without doing any more work.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Blizzard had a promo recently where they were giving away Diablo 3 and a bunch of other ingame loot for WoW, because they are afraid of people leaving the World of Warcraft game out of sheer boredom.
I think if you have to give a game away to keep your audience, you've got major fucking problems. Oh look, fucking ninja pandas!!! Jumping sharks!!!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
and (probably accidentally) Sony went for slower-burn strategies.
No accident, Sony actually said so.early on how they believed this console generation would last longer, just like how they said the PS2 would have a 10 year shelf life...which it did. (Damn thing just won't DIE)
I was done with Ubisoft when they released Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory with that God awful Starfoce DRM.
That shit appreciably slowed down my computer.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Ever since they used that Russian malware billed as copy protection, I haven't purchased anything from them. Of course, considering all they release are poorly done console ports it doesn't look like I've missed much.
A general request for the game development community - please go talk with Bioware. They've, so far and with few exception anyway (I felt Mass Effect 2 suffered from some console gimpage), figured out the dual PC/console development process.
A specific request to Ubisoft - go out of business. Please. Let the good developers working for you find jobs with decent companies.
Actually, the DRM on Valve titles has become more restrictive over the years. Portal 2 in particular is obnoxious - it has DRM that prevented the game from running for many users when it was first released, isn't compatible with Linux or certain anti-virus software, randomly breaks playing offline, and is designed to quietly render the game impossible to complete if it thinks you're trying to bypass it. (I'm pretty sure I somehow managed to trip that last one on my legally-obtained, uncracked and unmodified copy.)
I never ran into any of those issues. The only problem I had was when Portal 2 crashed at the main menu. I fixed that, and it hasn't bugged me since.
Overall, I've been majorly disappointed with all of the UBISOFT games over the last 3-5 years; post the REDSTORM acquisition, they had a couple of good title runs and then just effectively died from a quality standpoint. Ubi, I will mourn your passing because at this rate it's obvious you're terminal.