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.'"

Comments

DRM worked out then..

[matthiasvegh]

So remind us Ubisoft, why exactly did you create that horrible DRM?

Re:DRM worked out then..

[brit74]

So remind us Ubisoft, why exactly did you create that horrible DRM?

My guess is because:
- They hope that the next DRM will work
- They hope that, even if the DRM gets broken, that they'll still have a period of time when it's not broken. Having a few months of sales with zero pirates (even if the DRM gets broken on the third month) is actually useful.

Re:DRM worked out then..

[mkraft]

It's likely the DRM is driving people to piracy, even those who purchased the game, since the DRM frequently makes the game unplayable.

Re:DRM worked out then..

[Creepy]

I think he's putting spin on this - he doesn't say 93-95% is pirated, he says 5-7% pay for free-to-play compared to BOXED SET, as in retail. He doesn't mention how much business is digital download, and TFA is reading into it to say he means the rest is pirated (but that is all due to the spin he wanted to put on it). It would not surprise me AT ALL if only 5-7% of game sales is retail these days (probably more on console than PC, however).

Re:DRM worked out then..

[omnichad]

And then they'll count you and your cracked (purchased) copy as a pirated copy. No wonder they get such high numbers in their estimates.

Re:DRM worked out then..

[RanCossack]

The real cost is users later choosing not to buy more games they won't be able to play.

I'm not saying 'pirate!' either. It is undeniably legitimate to choose other ways of spending one's money and time.

Re:DRM worked out then..

[zarthrag]

As someone who bought up every game leading up to GRAW2, Pretty much every Prince of Persia, and most of the Splinter Cell games, but only the first AC game - that's a significant amount of cash. So this is an important point:

Ubisoft, a couple of years ago....I QUIT YOU.

I put up with the lack of patches for some games, and the Single-player games laden with always-on connections/drm/rootkits are where I draw the line. Just because you have some franchises, doesn't mean you no longer have to compete. There are plenty of new games every week that are vying for my money. I have NO problem finding entertainment that isn't trying to piss me off. (The way I see it, that 7% deserves to dwindle, the pirates clearly make a better product than you. How can you spit numbers like that, and have no clue) I've flipped you guys the bird, and it's still flyin'....C'est la vie, looks like I wasn't the only one.

Sad, I *still* play my Ghost Recon games...but Future Soldier is off the table for my pc. Maybe I'll pick up a copy for the PS3.... ....Used.

Re:DRM worked out then..

[Ironhandx]

Thier DRM is so bad that I crack it every fucking time.

Even though I legitimately own many Ubisoft games I'm counted as a pirate just because I've downloaded a cracked EXE or loader so I don't have to deal with DRM-related crashes.

Like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I and II. Both were DRM Crippled. They'd crash constantly. ALL of my problems disappeared as soon as I installed cracked EXEs. Those games got better reviews from the pirates than from the real players because the DRM-Stripped version was more stable.

Re:DRM worked out then..

[PopeRatzo]

The DRM scheme is working fine their piracy rates are by 5-7% from 100% piracy to 93-95%

I think the truth is that the "Free to Play" games aren't worth the price.

Re:DRM worked out then..

[CronoCloud]

Yeah the guy probably has that or some ISO mounter installed and is mistaken on the error message.

DRM

[Hatta]

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?

Re:DRM

[vlm]

A better argument is you're wasting huge amounts of programming effort, support costs, and bad PR on something that fails far more often than 19 out of 20 times, so you'd have a higher profit margin if you didn't waste money on it. Sort of a "once you find yourself stuck in a hole, rule one is stop digging"

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy games from sources that actually put effort into good, DRM-free work. Most of my games are from GoG these days.

Re:DRM

[twocows]

DRM is usually in place to stop day 1 pirating. So here's my suggestion: go ahead and ship it with DRM. Then, once it's been cracked by the community, release a patch that removes it.

Civ4 BTS no longer has DRM, though they did it sometime around the time Civ5 came out.

All the power to them.

[ilsaloving]

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.

He's right about the consoles taking too long

[crazyjj]

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.

Re:He's right about the consoles taking too long

[arkane1234]

It's not the console stopping them, it's not making good games.

Re:He's right about the consoles taking too long

[amicusNYCL]

You want a console that never requires you to upgrade? How is that 8-bit NES working for you? Still playing around with Excitebike, are you?

Does your "PC" console satisfy those criteria?

Goddamn right it does. My PC is ridiculously high-end enough that the system requirements don't apply. This is what "state of the art means", in case you're wondering. Even games that have "suggested hardware" are way behind the specs of my machine. That's the secret - upgrade every few years to the top of the line and system requirements no longer apply to you. I built my new computer for Skyrim when it came out and from the start I could run it smoothly at 1920x1200 with all display settings maxed out, even with the high-res texture and other graphics mods (you do have mods for your console games, right?). I even have a spare video card slot just waiting for a second Geforce once the polygon counts get even more ridiculous in a few years. By that time it will cost me maybe $200 or $300 to effectively double my machine's gaming performance.

But, if you're happy with a new gaming machine every 5+ years that gets released with hardware that is already out of date and has games that you aren't able to modify, then a console is definitely for you. You don't have to check system requirements, so you've got that going for you I guess. That must be nice.

Re:He's right about the consoles taking too long

[Silentknyght]

It's not the console stopping them, it's not making good games.

Mod parent insightful. The first thing you'll see for any next-gen system is the same IP being rehashed for another go-around. Metroid, Mario, & Zelda, and that's just Nintendo's IP. It's like the while DVD vs Bluray debacle: same story but new shininess, so please buy it all over again.

How the Major Publishers calculate piracy

[Eldragon]

1 - ((Number of sales title actually got) / (Number of sales title the studio wanted to get)) = Piracy Rate.

There is NO WAY this is correct. MATH INSIDE

[Foo2rama]

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/

Lesson heard loud and clear

[frovingslosh]

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.

Re:Only for Ubisoft

[Hatta]

Actually, a piracy rate of around 95% sounds about right for PC gaming going all the way back to the 5150, and the 8-bit home computers that came before it. PC gaming has survived for 30 years with piracy rates of 90% or more, it should survive for another 30.

Perhaps the games suck

[Windwraith]

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?

Re:Didn't they sell

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your math, kiddo. It would be closer to ten or twelve million, which is a lot but hardly beyond the realm of possibility for a game like that.

Re:Didn't they sell

[MozeeToby]

Once you throw in all the people who bought Xbox and PS3 versions of the game, the numbers get ridiculous again though. 9 million copies total, apparently 1 million of those are on PC + the 12 to 20 million alleged pirated copies. So, you're now saying that almost 30 million people were playing Assassins Creed II? I find that doubtful personally.

I don't buy or even play Ubisoft games

[AdmV0rl0n]

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.

Re:Contrast to Valve

[GoblinKing]

Valve's ability to make available popular titles through Steam in many markets and their near non-existent DRM probably contributes to the decline in piracy of Valve titles. Sure you need to be logged into a Steam account to run them but some of those Steam games are actually free to play anyways.

I bought CS:GO yesterday and will continue to buy my games from Steam. Assuming that Valve follows through on their promise to make Linux ports of their games and I'll even support their efforts by buying extra copies for friends and family.

Re:Didn't they sell

[Your.Master]

I think you must be in a bubble, video-game wise. Assassin's Creed is insanely popular (after all, the non-pirate sales are millions...)

Also, Ubisoft didn't claim that all their properties were pirated equally. Maybe the most popular ones are also disproportionately paid-for.

I really have insufficient data to confirm or deny their claim, and I expect the same is true for you.