Gaming Ubisoft driven to F2P market by piracy rates of 93-95%

Does Ubisoft note how many sales their DRM system has cost them?
They certainly lost mine (for ever and all time), perhaps that piracy figure reflects on a drop in paying customers as much as an increase in piracy, of which I imagine there are both.

 

I don't buy their games, and never will with that crap DRM they have... hell, I don't even pirate games, and never will pirate Ubisoft's games

It's just a waste of bandwith to me...

 

maybe ubisoft should talk to blizzard about allways on drm and making games work with it....

 

I call BS on you guys.

The Ubisoft DRM is not that bad from a practical point of view. The system works like Steam does, abeit less streamlined (not everybody can make the same interface): you log in, you download your game, you play your game, you download DLC, you play some more.

Yes, you have to stay on line. But hey, how many of you are not connected to the internet when gaming? Yes, that's right, a minority. I also think 95% is a bit much, but you can be sure that significantly more than half players pirated the game. That are not the nice guys who paid for the game but couldn't play it due their specific situation (interrupting internet connection, no connection available, etc) and so pirated it so they could rightly enjoy the game they bought. Also, my Steam refuses to start up in offline mode (i'm not alone), so it's requiring the connection too, except camouflaging it as a bug.

Yes, sometimes their servers are overloaded (you hear about it, but I never experienced it...) , but same argument like above: that's a non-normal situation, and the people who bought the game and found they couldn't play and pirated it for that reason are also a small minority.

The big majority is those who were either to cheap to buy the game, or couldn't (that's another debate, right guys?), and so shouldn't be playing it in the first place. The notion that every pirated copy is a lost sale is a wrong one, but I firmly believe a decent minority would have paid if they had to. If the distribution is 40/60 paid/pirated, and if only one in six would still pay for the game if it wasn't this readily available for free, they gain 25% sales. That is a lot. And it may encourage gaming studio's to try out some concepts that are not so mainstream. Because that is what you guys all want, isn't it? None of this well-selling MW3 crap, but more of the semi-flopped Mirrors Edge? Or pirated to death World of Goo? Hands in the air for those who played the last two longer than the first.

As for their games being bad or buggy or not to your tastes, they are not inherently worse, buggier or less to your taste than any other game from any other publishing company. And even if they were, that is no reason to exuse or even explain piracy. If you don't like it, don't use it. You not liking something someone worked on, doesn't give you the right of using it for free.

If Assassins Creed sucks, don't buy it, don't play it. It is not neccesairy to your survival, not even to your wellbeing.

I will get a lot of flak for this...

 

That does sound like an extraordinarily high rate of piracy - how are they measuring this ?

 

I doubt a Chief Exec of a company like Ubisoft could come out with something this stupid.

 

Sounds like an honest, or in this case dishonest case of conversation filler. I don't think he's pulled those figures from any statistics. Just opened his mouth and used the first numbers that came into his head.

I'm so unsure of Ubisoft these days, they can produce some really good games. I remember BUYING (note that) Splinter Cell Conviction, and really enjoying it. I must be in the small percentage, go me. On the other hand the new Ghost Recon looks awful. So awful I wouldn't even contemplate pirating it.

If the games decent, the majority of people will pay for it. Just please stop plastering your games with this awful DRM.

Also, Ghost Recon online; note free to play? I won't be playing it. I had a beta key, it's terrible.


F2P might not be your best avenue mate.

 

No one here said they pirated Ubisoft games...

Ubisoft's drm started off as ALWAYS ONLINE drm, ie you lose connection for anything and your game progress would be lost, Steam's solution doesn't work like that.

Are you a Statistician? If not, stop trying to model the number of people pirating games to the number buying games as you have no idea of how distribution works in statistics.

Mirrors Edge and World of Goo are both niche products, which were both successful and unsuccessful for their reasons. You can't compare games like for like to a popular easy to access game like Call of Duty. So I don't see why you mention these games by name in your post.

Buggy ports and poor performance even when your pc meets the minimum spec are a good reason to try a game before you buy as how are you meant to know if it will work on your current set up with out trying? Why should you be out of pocket for being missold a product which you can't even return?

Get your coat.

 

I'm not having that. They mean to tell us that they only recieve revenue from 5 - 7.% of their games being played? How the hell are they not declaring bankrupt? Utter bollocks.

 

Why do people in these comment threads always blame accountants? As one it annoys the crap out of me. I know that if you presented statistics that showed money was lost on making pc games then the recommendation would be to stop making them. I can't imagine a business case for invasive DRM that requires servers, licensing fees, staff etc. truly being justifiable by a potential increase in sales.

Heck try producing a good good quality game that innovates and doesn't have a load of annoying bugs (Vegas 1 & 2 machine gun sound loop problem, let alone the broken terrorist hunt spawning system) at a price that maximises the profit without the drm costs and accept that piracy exists for both PC and console games but that most of these would not have purchased anyway.

 

Admitted, they are not as perfect as steam is. But that doesn't mean they're awful.

Can I derive you are neither a statistician? No, I have no idea of the actual numbers, only that they are big enough to warrant investing in DRM (yes, that costs them too, and as any company subject to the kapitalistic system, they wouldn't do that if it didn't bring in more gains, in one form or another) . And so I demonstrated my argument with some numbers that looked reasonable to me.

Ah but yes, that is the point of my argument: Call of Duty is big and accessible enough to be profitable, even with significant piracy. Niche games like the two others are not.

That argument makes sense too. And I'm sure most readers here would instantly buy a game if they have played the first level of a pirated game and found it to their liking, instead of just playing until the end (because they don't have time or money right now to go to the store) and then reasoning that since they already finished it, giving away money would be a waste. If only the world was one big bit-tech community.

 

Intrusive, always-on DRM wins again!

 

Rofl how can the DRM be working if piracy is that rampant?

 

If that was in response to me, I guess I forgot the [SARCASM][/SARCASM] tags

 

Sometimes ? Overloaded? You probably meant to use the word Offline.

 

Agreed and how much of the piracy rate has been produced by alienated what would normally be paying customers.

What i find ridiculous is that you have to have Uplay and log your game to one account after purchasing it through steam with their own drm.

It all seems little loopy if you ask me.

 

Lol no, not directed at you

 

I had hoped not

 

Pirated Anno 2070

Quite liked it

Went and bought it, installed and saw the DRM...

Threw the bloody thing behind the sofa and went back to the pirated version.

 

Ubisoft is not the only company doing that. (GFWL comes to mind).
Mind: I don't like the DRM neither, but I don't think it deserves the bashing it gets. If you don't like part of a program (the DRM in this case), it may alienate you from it, fair enough. But that doesn't give you the real or moral right to get the part you DO like for free. So I suggest buying the game, putting it on the shelf, and pirating it to get around the DRM. If you buy a case but don't like some part from it (say, the color), the company selling them is not going to pay for the modification(e.g. your paintjob). But you can see too this is a less-than-optimal solution? Whereby the true solution would be no piracy, and unnatainable.

EDIT: much like Toka said.