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

[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"

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.