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

This is utter crap!

Although those figures might be close to reality in 2nd-world countries, that does not simply translate into lost revenue. If people could not pirate their games, they would simply not buy them, thus never experiencing how much (or little) talent was involved into making them. And that means people will never hear about you, and when their financial situation changes, they won't buy your games, but those they liked and pirated in the past. I believe it was Bill Gates who said "I'd rather have them pirate my software than someone else's" (he was referring to the Chinese market, which faced similar piracy rates), and then a few years later, managed to turn a hopeless case into a very profitable market.

Let's take another example: Blizzard. It's by far the number one seller of PC games in my country. Why? Because they offer the players something worth their money. When you have very little money to spend on non-essential things, what would you buy, a Blizzard game or an Ubisoft one? Exactly!
Now why did gamers in my country buy Diablo2, Starcraft1, Warcraft3? Was it because they couldn't find pirated copied of them? No! It was because a genuine copy allowed them to play on Battle.net, which was a totally different experience, and people raised up the cash to buy the games that a) they already finished several times in single-player, b) had countless nights of playing with friends in LANs and c) weren't even recently released titles. Now that is a success story!

Long story short, here's two golden rules to lower piracy rates and make money out of developing games:

1. make something worth buying, interesting, innovating, tasteful and smart.
2. release demos. When you have little money to spend, you're not going to buy a game on the chance that it will turn out to be fun for you (something no review can guarantee), but you're going to look for a pirated copy and see for yourself.

 

This is a real shame to me. Ubisoft is one of the few larger game corporations that don't suck at everything they do. I feel like piracy is definitely stoppable but companies are just too lazy to do anything about it. I have a few ideas of my own that would work but being a nobody, that isn't going to happen. At this point I feel like the only way to stop piracy on PC is to stop selling to it, which sucks but considering the statistics, its fair.

 

For 5 years Steam would drive me nuts because I could never get it to work in Offline Mode when my Internet connection was down (which happened reasonably often, sadly).
I tried everything, including removing my computer from the network and disabling the LAN ports. The issue persisted all through the life of my computer, through multiple WinXP/Win7Pro installs, driver versions, and even HDDs/SSDs, CPU and GPU changes. Another near identical computer with a different motherboard but the same chipset had no problems and the same with my low-power computer running WinXP,.

Then I bought a new motherboard and DDR3. Bingo. Steam now runs fine in Offline Mode. So all along something about my motherboard would piss off/confuse Steam so it would never go into Offline Mode.
I like Steam, but it was almost enough to drive me postal.

The motherboard was brilliant in all other respects, it survived 5 years of gaming (including 4 of being OCed to some degree) and went through 4 CPUs, 3 GPUs, 6 sticks of DDR2, 5 HDDs and 2 SSDs! And it was ex-display, so I got it cheap-ish. Best coin I ever spent.

 

I'm guessing a decent amount of those numbers are from people who bought the game but downloaded a cracked version/crack so they can actually play their game, From personal experience Ubisoft's servers are very unreliable.

 

That's actually a very good point, but do you think that makes up for the majority of claimed pirates?

 

Of course you'll get a lot of flak for it.

Personally, I probably spend maybe 5-10% of my time gaming when I don't have an active internet connection. I've never personally played an Ubisoft game, in large part because I disagree with their DRM. However, if you get kicked out of the game, errors out, etc if you lose a connection, even briefly...well THAT would happen with a regularish amount of frequency. Maybe not every day, but at least once a week probably I'll lose the Wifi signal or maybe my router goes on the fritz for a minute, or just plain Verizon for some reason actually cuts out for a bit (rarest of rares).

I have no issues if a game requires an internet connection to register the game, has to verify with servers to download and install DLC, updates, etc. However, for a single player game, or even LAN multiplayer, it should not require an internet connection either start playing the game, or to continue playing it. Only install/updates/DLC.

That said, I honestly can't remember the last game I pirated. Probably at least 6-7yrs ago. Maybe more (probably was college the last time I did). I pretty much go F2P that have IAP models that actually work (like World of Tanks and Star Wars Online) or the very rare game I am interested enough in to pay money for. Course it helps that I have limited free time with 3 kids under 5.

I've probably spent $30 in Apple Appstore games (maybe 10-12 paid games?). I've also bought, off the top of my head, 3 games in the last 3 years for the PC (MTW 2, ETW and HL2 Orange Box). A couple more I have gotten as (purchased) gifts (SC2 is the only one off the top of my head). One or two games I have also bought for the Wii as family games. So, really I am not some great contributor to the gaming market...though mostly from lack of time. That and older games still interest me a lot (just because I bought it 7 years ago doesn't mean the game sucks now). Even before I was a father though I just can't invest that much in games. Unless the game is bad, a new game can usually engross me for a good 2-4 months. These days with limited time, more like 6-8 months.

 

I bought Ass Creed. The first three titles infact, on recommendation from a few friends. It sucked arse, I've never even gotten further than the first mission on the first game.

I also bought the latest Splinter Cell and found it worth my money(albeit at 75% off) even with the forced Uplay.

All in all, I have little love for Ubi, but also not that much hate. They do push out good games, even if they tend to ruin them with somewhat restrictive DRM solutions. They should learn that a good apple will sell itself, but not if you roll it in turds before putting it on display.

 

Ubi's DRM stance can be considered a largely failed social experiment in its current form.

I'm all for killing piracy and going back to decent demos, but crushing the spirit of non pirating customers is most definitely not the way forward.

Coming from someone who is lucky to achieve 24 hours of unbroken broadband.

 

Apparently 93-95% of statistics are made up!


I have never pirated a game... you are far more likely to get a virus if you pirate a game.
The one thing I do hate though is DLC... Most DLC at the moment seems to be rubbish and adds only 1 or 2 things to the game that you actually want, the rest is just crap to make the COD fans happy

 

Agreed. I have brought all my Ubisoft titles at top dollar. I even own two copies of chaos theory. Have I pirated a game? Yes. Why? Well, it is normally for one of two reasons. #1 I have heard of the game and there is no demo. So I'll try it, then buy it or delete it. #2 For LAN parties. If you host local LAN parties, you know how much of a pain in the rear setting one up can be. 10% of the people don't own the game.... 25% will be on the wrong patch.... etc. In fact, I have two installs of CoD 4 on my system. The one I own, and the one I use for LAN parties. Ubisoft has never been one of my favorite companies.

 

I'll bet its the same way EA and Crytek measured the piracy rates for Crysis.:
"There are 20 million graphics cards bought that are capable of playing crysis. But we sold 2 million copies. Therefore 90% didn't buy Crysis so must have pirated it."

Wrong.
Some of us with PC's capable, just didn't buy Crysis. We played Modern Warfare instead. The first one. Before it became the same game rebranded every year.
And just because I didn't buy From Dust, does not mean I pirated it. I just didn't want to play it.

 

If anything their DRM probably increased piracy of their titles, as I imagine the people who cracked it developed a loophole so you can play without an internet connection, due to their annoyance with it.

 

This kind of statement (from Ubisoft) puts me off buying Ubisoft games more than any form of DRM. Because it's such a load of bull as others have already described.

 

95% piracy rate?? that just utter BS and ridiculous!!!!
I cant remember the last Ubisoft game I played let alone the last one I paid for.... some splinter cell game or Rainbow Six 3 and its expansion packs I think.
Here's an idea UbiSoft, You make something worth buying and then we will consider buying it.
Jesus, why has piracy got to be everyone's scape goat to crappy sales of a crappy game???

 

i think the Anno 2070 expansion will be the last game i buy with an ubi stamp on it.

 

This how I think Ubisoft's collective mind works...

"We made a F2P Game... 90% of people chose not to buy any content... therefore 90% of people people are pirates"

 

What a load of bullsh*t.

You can keep your DRM infested games Ubisoft.

 

Poor, poor Ubisoft. They keep putting more and more DRM on their games and now people don't want to buy them. I wonder why.

I think that there will always be a base level of piracy that will never go away. Some people simply cannot afford to purchase games at $50 or $60. If piracy is possible they WILL play the game.

Ubisoft is treating these as 'lost sales'. Sorry, they aren't able to be sales, they couldn't buy it if they wanted to.

Their response to this is onerous DRM, which punishes the purchaser more than the pirates. The pirates WILL crack the game, and people who would otherwise purchase it will pirate it as a form of protest.

The high prices don't really help. AssCre 1 is still $20 on Steam, it's 4 years old now.

 

Succesful DRM...95% piracy rate.

Right, id love to be in that KPI meeting for the DRM.

Goal: Acheive 5% purchase conversion rate within time and budget. Customer satisfaction is of no issue on this topic.

Custermer satisfaction - No job goals on this one. Not important to us. Just make money and ensure DRM so investors think we are doing something against piracy.

UBIsoft continually amaze at there stupidity. On the other side of the fence.....LOOK AT VALVE FFS!!!!! Customer first focus vs bottom line focus....wonder which company will be around in 5 years time.

 

This is total BS !

It was YEARS I played the last Ubisoft. It was so long ago that I don't even remember anymore!