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Ubisoft Claims PC Piracy Rate of 93-95%
silentbrad sends this quote from GamesIndustry:
"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. ... '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.' ... '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.'"
So remind us Ubisoft, why exactly did you create that horrible DRM?
Yah, 93-95% piracy ONLY for Ubisoft. But we all know why.
The catch is they were measuring the number of people who pirate Ubisoft games to get away from their shitty DRM. Somehow, I feel over 90% of people willing to do that is accurate.
Do we need any more evidence that Ubisoft's management is completely out of touch with reality?
over a million copies of Ass Creed 2 on the pc? Are they straight faced saying that almost a hundred million people played Ass Creed 2 on pc?
So what's the point of all that DRM if 90% of your potential customers are breaking it? Wouldn't it be better to go DRM free so that people could actually play the game as shipped instead of downloading a crack and getting counted as a pirate?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I know that a pirated game is not the same as a lost sale, but this is like going to see a movie and realize that only you and you friend sitting next to you has paid for the ticket. And on top of that everyone has better seats than you.
No one would ever pirate a Ubisoft game, no one likes Ubisoft anymore.
If there's one thing I learned, it's that companies will do whatever the hell they want and as customers we can suck it up or do something about it. Unfortunately, like spam, they make enough money from people that they see no reason to change.
I refuse to buy Ubisoft products anymore. Same with Blizzard and Sony. And when other people complain about how they got screwed as if it was some new revelation, I just sit back and enjoy the schadenfreude.
I think he is vastly overestimating his potential revenue. The # of people who install/run a pirated game (or a free game) plus the actual sales #'s does not equal the number of people who would be inclined to buy said game.
Even if they had the perfect digital restrictions management that prevented all piracy the publishers of non-free software will continue to claim piracy will continue to hurt them. It is high time to ditch M$ and all of their cronies and embrace free software, games included.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.
[citation needed]
...lest we forget aftermarket sales. It's a physical disc that can be sold & resold. These people are not pirates, but their purchases are not going directly to the game production company as attributable to that particular game, either.
This isn't nearly as impressive as their shit game rate, which last I checked was holding steady at 100%.
Just sounds like they're making excuses to pull out of the PC market to me. I'm sure the likes of Steam won't shed a tear if they go.
So if we had 0% piracy, should their games cost $3.00?
The traditional lifespan between consoles is 5 years, going all the way back to the Atari 2600 days. This time, MS is now at 6 years old with no new console in sight, and Sony is at 5 years, also with no new console in sight. A lot of developers are getting nervous, and a lot of franchises are growing stale.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Ubisoft is full of shit as usual.
1 - ((Number of sales title actually got) / (Number of sales title the studio wanted to get)) = Piracy Rate.
It would be better to make enforcement of DRM-breaking penalties effective, especially since the costs of said enforcement are borne by taxpayers and ISP's, and not by us content producers.
You are all criminals, and you should all be treated as such, and you should all pay for said treatment out of your own wallets. And since this is the *only* way the market can be made to produce new content, you should be happy about it, too!
You'd think companies would be more eager to sell on steam.. Since 100% of players on steam must be legitimate customers. :)
No wonder valve doesn't release sales stats. Those numbers alone must be a gold mine, letting them predict actual real sales trends far ahead of the competition.
DRM is so old school my friend. Diablo 3 showed us that people will pay for a single-player game where only the art is on the client and the code runs on the server. Fast forward ten years: computing and bandwidth will be much cheaper and more powerful and the whole thing will be transparent to nearly everyone.
Diablo 3 will be the model for making people buy games.
maybe you should shrug *insert more ayn rand themed jokes that are both offensive and not funny like her books*
This logic seems very sound to me. Let's look at the Witcher 2, which sold 3 million units on the PC. This means by UBIsofts logic the game WOULD have sold 60 million copies if it wasn't for the fact that ever single person who owns a PC is a dirty thief, or almost exactly double the sales of Super Mario Brothers over the last 30 years, counting over a dozen re-releases on over 10 different consuls.
That seems about right, and I can see how a perfectly reasonable person in touch with reality might think that.
Ubisoft != the game industry...
It's just that they're still coasting on the original rainbow six style gaming platform. It gets old.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Lets do some math....
The last ghost recon has sold 1.03 million units so far world wide. Which assuming the 95% piracy rate means 20.6 million units would have been sold or 14.7million units at the 93% piracy rate.
The original Bioshock on xbox360 only moved 2.53 million units worldwide, and we can assume a very low piracy rate as it was on Xbox 360 only. That game was a huge hit, the Last Ghost Recon did well not amazing.... So you are saying that between 5-9 time more people played Ghost recon vs Bioshock? Yes the lat Ghost recon has cross platform but even if you take that into account...
Anyone else see the math issue?
Data pulled from here. http://www.vgchartz.com/game/43311/tom-clancys-ghost-recon-future-soldier/
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
Ubicrysoft. They sold tons of copies of Assassin's Creed franchise on the Steam during the Vacation's promo in july.
I love MBA math. You can concoct any numbers you like to support your business case. I tried this in pre algebra, x*2=20; I answered x=pi. I failed. Why don't they?
Silence is a state of mime.
So I'm pretty sure what Ubisoft is telling me is that if I buy one of their titles, I'll not only be paying for the game, but the price reflects that they believe I'm also paying for up to 19 other people who play it but don't buy it! No wonder the price is so high for just a piece of game software! I don't want to pay for up to 20 users of the software (myself included), and I don't like having to deal with DRM that those other 19 player apparently can avoid. Thanks for the info Ubisoft, it will affect my decision next time that I want to play a game.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It sounds like he's referring to the typical countries where counterfeit and pirated products of all types are sold on every corner (as opposed to the dirty thieves in the US who are just too cheap to pay for it). I'm sure there are many US pirates that they are now getting more revenue from as well, but it sounds like this is specifically targeting the locations where bootlegs are the norm over legitimate products.
A rather silly Atlas for wanting to play a Ubisoft title.
Hi Atlas.
Set me down. Kthx.
3
-Earth.
So what you're really saying is that it is just like we've always been saying. Only people with money to pay for games will pay for games. I would have never guessed that the pre-teen and early adolescent crowd couldn't afford to buy your games at the store or make online micro-payments with their personal credit cards. I mean really I'd be quite happy to store my credit card on my kid's Xbox live account and give them carte blanche to buy whatever swag they like. You mean parents don't really do that?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
When your sales suffer because of poor planning and overly "console-izing" your game, don't take responsibility for it. Don't try to design your controls and User Interface for the platform your *selling* it to (the PC market). All you have do is raise your hands, and shout piracy at your next shareholder meeting. That's how real management takes responsibility right, find a scapegoat? Since you're telling everyone you have 93% piracy of your games, the DRM you're using is apparently working REALLY well. You should really keep adding features to the DRM that annoy the last few people willing to pay for your software!
I mean, look at Valve/Steam. They're not making any money at *all* over there! Why Gabe Newell might be living under a bridge next week, all because PC users are all violent criminals and thieves. Wearing their eye patches and swashbuckling around with their parrots on their shoulders.
Ubisoft, I would be thrilled if you'd take your crappy ass titles off my platform, both so you suffer financially and so I don't have to listen to your pathetic lies any more.
If you take responsibility for your actions and fire your MANAGEMENT staff, perhaps I will purchase a game of yours in the future. I'm not holding my breath for that though. Please, by all means, keep trying to earn money whipping that dead horse of yours... It's been working great for you so far.
Thank you for your time...
Because a simple game like Minecraft has several, millions of paying customers. And most of them came in when the game was at full price, as opposed to the cheaper prereleases.
So... how come people are willing to pay for Minecraft and not for Ubisoft's games?
Tip: if you manage to persuade someone passing by on their way to get some Apple devices that they should pay for games instead of you, and they ask you to pay for a few more just to show them how it's done : don't fall for it.
I'm willing to bet they're actually counting a whole lot of us in a percentage that high as pirates, who actually just aren't playing their games at all. Once they started down their horrible DRM path I just stopped playing their games in any fashion. After all, they're just games, not a one of them will kill me if I don't play it.
Why don't they just stop making PC games then? I don't buy their products, just as disclaimer.
It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate
The lesson to learn here is this: If you are going to lie, lie believably. Otherwise, only people who already agreed with you will listen.
93%-95% of your "gamers" aren't really that interested in what you're programming, or the games simply aren't compelling enough for more than a test-drive worth of game play. If about 5-7% of people like your game enough to play it for more than a couple of sessions, they buy it. It just so happens that is the case whether you put a cardboard box with a $60 price tag on it, or you give away the opening scene for free, and require the player pay to move past the rudimentary play level.
So, are you going to use this information to make each game better and more compelling, resulting in a higher conversion rate? Or, as I suspect, are you going to continue churning out crap and complaining that people just aren't willing to pay for your "exceptional" games?
And 117% of the pirates are just doing it because their DRM is so bad.
See, I can make up stats too!
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I wonder if that also counts towards the numbers:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080718/1117121722.shtml
funny they are now trying to say that ubisoft's corrupt business practices that I refuse to be a Customer of is piracy.
I'm sorry, I'm just not buying that quoted piracy rate. How do they know what the piracy rate is - surely the pirates don't fill in questionnaires on what games they've pirated. And they can't be stupid enough to connect to multiplayer servers with pirated software and not expect to get noticed / banned.
Cracks. The most convincing argument I've heard for them is that they remove the DRM code that prevents legitimate users from playing their game when they're offline. I had a situation recently where I couldn't play the games I've bought because my modem packed in.
I buy all my PC games through steam. It's more convenient than buying disks and it's a good management tool for games software, although I find it hard to swallow that the steam client has to have over 100mb RAM and be on all the time. It also seems to communicate constantly with its server. Spyware?
Most of the PC gamers I know buy games through legit channels too. The people who don't, just don't earn the money to spend £30-£50 on a title.
I'm not defending them. I'm studying for an MSc in games programming and I'd like to think people would buy my products rather than rip them off. But the games industry is rather like the music industry in the way they approach copyright infringement. They just don't get it.
Sell at the right price and people will buy legit. Sell at stupid £50 per title price and people will rip off your product, or at least wait until they're offered at a reasonable price on steam.
Ubisoft is full of shit as always.
sell the games for $10, force users to have to buy onine content to "unlock" things.
even is they pirate the game, you still have to buy the awesome-o 2000 weapon, etc
works well for android and iOS developers (zynga, rovio, etc..)
just sayin ...
This is the piracy rate for *Ubisoft* games.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Oh, so dis isn't the place for da Rand jokes? I guess I'll just leave through rearden.
So terribly offensive to reject slavery in its entirety. Oh, the temerity to denounce violence against our fellow innocent human beings!
It is times like this that makes me feel like I'm being counted as one of the pirates. I am a PC gamer but don't buy their games. Granted, I don't download, install, or play them either, but I'm having trouble believing that statistic.
Valve has indicated, in their public statements on the issue, that piracy has has a negligible impact on their bottom line in any market they make their product available in. Notably, they indicated that when they made their products available on day 1 in the Russian market, Russian piracy dried up.
Any bets on whether Ubisoft checks the IPs and ignores 'piracy' in areas they are not making the game available in? No takers? Didn't think so.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
As I said in my other comment, he specifically mentions "countries" where their games were "played but not bought" before stating the 93-95% piracy rate. Assuming he's talking about those developing countries with rampant bootlegs and counterfeits, that would fall under the 0.10m "Rest of the World" sales. Using that number, you're talking about 1.4-2.0m pirated copies. That's still a huge number compared to only 1.03m actual sales, but it's much more reasonable than 15-20m. That would result in a total of about 3m copies, which is more in line with your Bioshock number (which was released nearly 5 years ago, so there should be more consoles worldwide now).
Simple facts. Nasty company. Nasty DRM.
I don't tend to pirate games now, because of two core reasons:
1. Steam, and steam value - I feel in most cases I can buy games for a fair price, usually in the sales. The sales are probably at a level that I am willing to pay. Companies are *going to have to accept low price, high volume. Not the reverse.
2. The virus and malware landscape simply means I am generally unwilling to allow unknown/untrusted exe or similar files on my systems. Thats fundamentally a deeper threat to me than evil gamesellers DRM, but both are a threat.
But Ubisoft, frankly, you are a foul, nasty company. Your DRM antics mean you don't deserve to survive. Either learn the lessons or go die. Seriously.
We`re all equal
You can download a pirated version of a game that just works, or you can buy a legit copy that is crippled by design. Hard fucking choice. Haven't these companies learned *anything* from the music DRM fiascos a few years back?
So, for every 100 people who play the game, only 7 of them actually purchase it? There's no friggin way. How the hell do 93 people use the same 7 activation keys? ESPECIALLY when you need to be connected to the ubisoft mothership to actually play. He must be using the same Abacus as the MPAA/RIAA uses.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Or maybe Ubisoft just make games people don't want?
According to some random web site Skyrim has sold 2.36 million copies on the PC. So by their 93% number 31.4 million pirates must have "stolen" it - three times the total sales on PS3 and xbox. Even for a purely single player game with a readily available warez copy hat doesn't pass the smell test.
Surely what he's actually doing is looking at the number of pays vs connections on the F2P and seeing 5-7% there. Looking at the boxed set connections and seeing they are about the same as the number of F2P connections and ASSUMING that there are similar numbers of people playing the boxed set where they can't be seen.
A lot of game manufacturers claim it's piracy when most of those "pirates" are actually just reloading their game that they originally purchased in the first place, but had to get a heck to work around the DRM that shouldn't have been there.
And modders.
Exception: China - most game s/w there is pirated. Period.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
(i.e. paid money for) was Rayman for the Atari Jaguar.
math troll rules them all, all the tiem
stop developing PC ports....
Killed the Might and Magic series (especially the RPGs, but Heroes is just a shadow of its former self as well).
Killed Beyond Good and Evil.
Killed Settlers.
(Personal opinion) Splinter Cell is just a Metal Gear solid clone, and Assassin's Creed is a medieval GTA.
Used all forms of shitty DRM across the years. Everyone is complaining about UPlay, but I remember getting a free Splinter Cell disc with a video card and not installing it because of StarForce.
The result?
I don't even read news or reviews about Ubisoft games. How can I pirate them when I don't know what they have out?
And of course the Assasin's Creed lovers will pirate the game because the piratebay version actually works.
Note 1: I have 120ish purchased games on Steam.
Note 2: I own a PS3, I have a stack of about 10 unopened PS3 games waiting for me to have time to play them, plus a stack of 30+ games that i've at least ran once.
Note 3: I still wouldn't buy Ubisoft games for the PS3 for fear of what they might do to my console.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
It would seem that for MMO's that are F2P the supposed "need" for DRM is completely obviated. For most F2P MMOs revenue comes from in-game purchases. I was reading some other articles that for Sony, and NCSoft they saw very large increases in revenue from games when they went F2P. I am drowning in F2P games on my PC. An embarrassment of riches. I haven't touched, never mind even bought a game for, my console in about a year.
maybe you should shrug *insert more ayn rand themed jokes that are both offensive and not funny like her books*
Contrary to what you think, the post you replied to did not have any Ayn Rand reference. This guy is not a reference to Ayn Rand any more than Zarathustra is a reference to Stanley Kubrick or Richard Strauss -- it's the other way around.
Source?
"I think that the new consoles will give a huge boost to the industry, just like they do every time that they come. "
This is just my gut talking, but I really feel like people are actually caring much less about the next generation consoles this time. Smartphones and tablets are increasingly becoming a way to spend leisure gaming time with a much lower cost.
I just can't seen "Xbox 720" and "Halo 7" and PS4 making that big of an impression this time.
Can I see the source where you got this from?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You can't even buy a read-only optical drive anymore. A laptop's burner isn't exactly removable by most. What do they expect people to do?
Source - lots of people I know personally.
Heck, have you even tried to d/l the Sims 3 using their new engine? Blew up multiple times.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Seriously. The effect of using DRM causes people to want to pirate the game. What does a kid do when told not to do something? He does it. I believe the same principle applies here.
help make SPAM profitable by sending money to a Nigerian prince scam. So stop supporting companies that use DRM by buying their products! If copying software is like theft, then paying money for software is like being responsible for scams.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Exactly 0% of them are pirated. I didn't pay full retail price for most of them - thank you Humble Bundles - but I didn't pirate them either. In fact, I've paid for FFXI three times now - it's worth $10 once every few years to avoid having to spend 8 hours re-downloading six expansions and ten years worth of patches any time I need to reinstall.
TFA doesn't list his source for his numbers, either.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
OK Ubisoft. Stop making games and you will finally win over piracy at long last, with a 0% rate. Considering the games lately it's not like you'll be missed anyway.
PS: I can make up statistics too, in fact 73.8% of all people do.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I personally remember the outrage and disbelief at the concept of paying .99 for a tune on my mp3 player. My nephews and neices don't even notice it...
In this case the grass REALLY was greener back then...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
There was a time when I looked forward to their games, but now there's more DRM than game and they haven't brought anything worth playing out in the last few years.
But nah that wouldn't have anything to do with them complaining about piracy, surely not.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
And they then complain about the thieving?
All rites reversed 2010
So using Ubi Soft's numbers of 95% piracy...
They got about 1.3 Billion dollars in sales last year.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ubisoft-profits-rise-to-30m-in-fy2012/096074
But that is ONLY 5% of the number of paying players.
So I expect when they figure it all out, and make it online only registration play DRM etc...
There sales should increase by 24.7 Billion to an astonishing 26 Billion dollars in sales annually!
Well done Ubi Soft, well done!
the consoles will save us all!!! keep telling yourself that, ubi..
would you kindly shrug *insert more ayn rand themed jokes that are both offensive and not funny like her books*
FTFY.
why the frack are you wasting resources (time,money, effort) on fracking computer games?
True that. Games, entertainment, and Battlestar Galactica reruns are for rich people. You po' fo'k oughta spend your spare time at a second job down at the Mickey-D's.
Then it lost Ubisoft 10% of their profit.
That's what a 80%+ piracy rate means. Up to 20% buying rate compared to 5%. 4-to-1 or under F2P, 7%, 3-to-1
Start charging $20-50 per game in Australia right now. I've been Grey market importing PS3 titles, I own over 26 games. The price is right at the UK level of $20-50/game. I'll never pay your bullshit $110 game prices. Don't even try to justify that bullshit to me.
For what it is worth, what Ning (http://ning.com) had when it was still "freemium" was that only something like 7-9% of networks used any "premium" service (which included custom domain name, for 5$ a month or so). When having to choose, eventually equivalent of maybe 20% chose paying, which was a huge improvement. There was nothing illegal on not paying, of course, I just think it is interesting that ratio would be similar to (alleged) illegal copying rate.
I don't pirate ubishit games. They're terrible at any price. Including free.
And i sure as hell won't ever pay for anything with the ubisoft name on it. I learned that the hard way more than a few times now.
But i don't pirate them either.
UBISOFT YOUR GAMES ARE NOT WORTH THE PRICE OF FREE! thats how bad you've gotten.
If you paid me enough i might try them. But it would have to be a large sum. Because i don't want your shit on any pc of mine.
EBOD ubishit. Hurry up and die already.
the real reason people won't pay is because they're not given a reason to. DRM makes problems for legit users, and most games just aren't good enough to deserve the price tag. F2P is good in one sense, that yes we can play. But now we play against retards that pay for items that make them better than us, taking away the *game* part of the game. It's not a game when it's fixed so you loose. I think it's okay to pay for mere cosmetics, but not for game altering effects. I'm playing bioware doesn't ruin C&C generals 2 in this way.
People would buy games if they were around $20 and they were very good. Free versions should be the full game except with limited amount of play per day like say 1 hour. DRM would have to go... it never worked and almost always caused problems causing users to regret their purchase.
...he's doing the usual thing of taking all of the unauthorized downloaded copies as lost sales, and then saying that they're losing 95% of all their sales to piracy?
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
No. Breaking DRM should not be illegal. If we have a product and want to make a copy, so long as we don't share it illegally, that's our natural and logical right. They have no control over what we do in our homes, so to criminalize that they have no control over s beyond stupid, as is you inane and retarded rambling.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I bought Hawk 2 from steam and recently Driver SF for $1 from the ubi store. The legit version of Hawk 2 would crash constantly due to failures with their DRM server. Driver SF wouldn't even install right and would fail to launch. So I installed the pirate versions of both, which worked just fine without issues... So what do I count as? Yeah of course people are pirating the games, so they can actually enjoy them.
Did anyone else here play a legit boxed copy of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier on PC shortly after it came out? It wasn't even really playable for people that weren't pirating it until a patch that came out a week or two ago.
I have to disagree with you. Free-To-Play is the ultimate DRM. Your game only exists as long as that game cloud is running. As soon as it becomes unprofitable, they'll pull the plug in a heartbeat. Just like that, your game is gone.
From the publisher's point of view, this is the best possible solution. Turn everything into MMORPG, MMORTS, or MMOFPS and start raking in the dough. As soon as v2 comes out, pull the plug on v1. Or better yet, make expansion1 that makes those playing the vanilla version lose every time. I can see more powerful guns in FPS-type games (like the Double-Barrel shotgun in Doom2), more powerful units in RTS games (like Krogoth in Total Annihilation:Core Contingency), and Monty-Haul Loot Drops (TM) in MMORPGs (like Dust of Disappearance in Curse of the Azure Bonds - that stuff rocked!)
Point is - I can still play Curse of the Azure Bonds more than 20 years after it was made. Yes, I still have a floppy drive in my computer, and an emulator is required. The Free-To-Plays will probably last 5, perhaps 15 if they are a runaway success. Future generations may not have access to them. Now where did that Adventurer's Journal run off to, I need to read Entry 37.
His DRM is working awesome. Not only is it stopping me from pirating, it's stopping me from having enough desire to even play their games.
God Bless Bram Cohen.
I did some very brief research in the past about software piracy back when the Dead Trigger story came out. 93% is the software piracy rate of the highest piracy countries in the world.
As I mention in that post, if you read the original interview, Yves was talking in the context of those specific countries when he gave the 93% figure. So free to play gives them no different results in those countries where they have no social stigma about pirating.
Contrast the 93% number of Armenia to the 20% piracy rate of the lowest country on that list (that would be the United States), and it makes a lot more sense why the immediate reaction of western countries is to not believe the figure.
Still, free to play seems like a dumb solution and their attempt at a DRM bandaid is even more idiotic.
Really, you're going to get buttfucked BIGTIME with your blinkered attitude.
.. and maybe they'll listen.. On the other hand, why bother?
The fact that people are playing for free on a F2P and the number of paying customers is in relatively low numbers SOMEHOW translates to piracy?!
Forgive me if I am wrong, but isn't the whole point of F2P mean I play for free? Should I expect the FBI/MPAA/RIAA to bust down my door soon and scare the shit out of my cats because I am playing DDO/LotRO/Star Trek Online (all F2P) because now I am a pirate playing F2P games without buying any of their shinys?