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

So the drm was so bad that 95% of their customers would rather pirate it with rick of virus than have a version with drm...

 

But you have to understand guys. It doesn't justify piracy. This is merely their (admittedly knee-jerk) reaction to piracy. I mean it's not as bad as Epic who have just flat out refused to even make crappy ports. But still, there's a reason they're doing it and anyone who justifies piracy is just that. Their justification for making such DRM.

In an ideal world, we would simply just not buy their games and NOT PIRATE it. That would change their minds. But if they're not only not getting sales but also having it "stolen" then they're obviously going to add a bigger and more expensive lock. So it's not fair just to criticize them. But also look at our own behavior. Because all actions are just reactions to another action.

 

Most here aren't saying "Because of what Guillemot said we should go and pirate Ubisoft stuff".
Most are saying what Guillemot said lacks a logical basis, is non-sensical, and what he claims cannot be adequately measured and accounted anyway.
Is he measuring piracy by counting the numbers of torrent downloads? Has he employed psychics? Has he been practising haruspicy (reading animal guts)? Or is he looking at disappointing Ubisoft sales and coming to the conclusion that only piracy could account for such poor performance? Aliens?

But then he went further and used the figures that he pulled out of his backside to justify (directly or indirectly):
1 - Ubisoft's draconian DRM scheme that punishes the people who pay for the software, or dissuades many from purchasing, while doing NOTHING to stop piracy,
2 - Blame piracy for poor sales of Ubisoft games, when it could have much to do with point 1 above,
3 - Use these poor sales to justify a move to a F2P model, where he claims a similar percentage pay for content anyway (so why bother going on about it?).

We are also claiming that what Guillemot thinks or doesn't think has little impact because he and his company doesn't make games that are compelling people to buy, other than some people who like Assassin's Creed or Anno or Ghost Recon games. But then some people would buy My Little Pony games as well, so there is no accounting for tastes.

Lastly, we are voting with our cash and just not buying their games, because otherwise he wouldn't be squealing like a little piggy and talking about moving to a F2P model.

 

Alpaca, can I use the above in my sig please, the amazingly poor use of English while attempting a use of higher English tickles me no end

 

There is no way to track piracy in an accurate way.

Anyway, personally there is currently no ubisoft game around i could be bothered to buy, or pirate.
oh, right, according to ubi that probably makes me a pirate too, let me just grab my cutlass and dance around the pc while singing we are all evil pirates.

 

Lol, how polite. I just stole my sig quote and asked permission after

 

As someone who mistakenly bought the excellent Anno 2070 and only realised after the event that it was a Ubisoft title and has consistently been plagued by uplay connection problems since, Ubisoft deserver all the negative comments they are getting in this thread and else ware.

A bunch of us bought it but because of the issue with its crap DRM and the rubbish service offered by uplay it's been rare for us to get a game going where all 3 of us have been able to consistently enjoy the game we paid for. Several of the key functions of Anno (ark storage for instance) are tied to having a constant connection to the uplay servers.

The same applies to Splinter Cell Conviction, we picked it up for £3.25 in the steam summer sale but still feel ripped off at that price as only just recently have the servers been accessible. We ended up having to use a 3rd party vlan solution called tungle to play, which begs the question why did we bother paying for it in the first place? I am relieved we did not pay full price for it because I understand the uplay issues were just as bad on release.

These 2 games had broken a long standing ban I had on any ubisoft titles, after far too many buggy console ports and their ever more intrusive DRM. It interesting but also sad to see little has changed.

Ubisoft need to look a bit closer to home if they wish to understand why their games are pirated a lot and/or don’t sell that well compared to their expectations.

The move to free to play is hilarious, probably good for their income if they make one or more games that are as popular as World of Tanks for instance but they should at least be honest that their motivation is monetary. Personally I am not a fan of “Free” to play games, Wot was fun for a bit but not actually cheap or free if you want to get a reasonable conversion of reward for effort and even then it’s a bit of a grind. It makes me sad to see that they are planning titles like Silent Hunter on-line, Anno on-line etc. Much like Splinter cell, Ubisoft have ruined a good number of their key franchises by making them poorly.

Regarding their stats, it sound a bit a bit high, might be true but they should not just be able to make flippant comments without providing a bit of evidence. It feels like piracy is just a convenient scapegoat for them to use as a reason for moving to the F2P model.

I'd consider piracy as a 2 fingers up to them but I have a limited amount game time these days, so if it's not worth my money, it's not worth my time either!

 

Yes, if you accurately explain what is wrong with that sentence. As you may have guessed (and my sig proclaims), English is only my tirth language, so I'm eager to learn from my mistakes.

 

Neither is used to say that something isn't one of a pair of options. Your sentence was flawed because it used neither and only presented one option: statistician. For example, if your sentence was changed to "Can I derive you are neither a statistician nor a mathematician?" it would work. Or you could just change "neither" to "not" in your original sentence.

Hope that helps!

 

Spot on, and alpaca I'll just make you feel better again by pointing out that 99% of English speakers would have had no problem at all understanding what you meant

 

Just bought a bunch of random indie games on steam, no money for you ubi and it didn't involve any piracy.

 

Aha, thanks for the explanation.(rep++) So the two options being 'me' and 'you' does not count? And the following sentence is wrong too then? (if not, why?)

 

I'll admit, I never read your whole post or what it was responding to. After going back and reading, it makes a bit more sense and is actually a pretty simple fix.

Your crocodile sentence is correct. If you structured your original sentence that way it would also work. Something like: "I'm not a statistician, can I derive that neither are you?". The way you had it structured it looked as though statistician was being presented as one of the options since you never made it clear that you weren't a statistician.

Alternatively, you could drop neither and use either. Something like "Can I derive that you aren't a statistician either?" would work too, since it implies that you aren't a statistician.

 

I am a Mathematician however, and my point was that once you start plucking numbers out of thin air, then it's just a guesstimate based on your own experience/data which will most likely be a small subset of the actual data.

Therefore when ever I see articles quoting %'s without any data to back up their conclusion, I know it's just a load of rubbish to make a headline for someone somewhere. :>

Maths aside, I still think Ubisoft are rubbish for finding excuses of why they don't concentrate on Pc games.

 

Wow, with numbers like those you'd feel like a right mug if you actually paid for any of their games!

 

**** Ubisoft

 

I do wonder if whomever released this statement actually took a step back and went "95%? But our DRM was still effective? Did everyone pirate it before?" or similar.

And to those complaining about Always On DRM: I agree with you. BT are currently installing FTTC in this area, which means i'm getting repeated connection drop-outs and other fun issues. Why should I suffer for events outside of my control? I'm so very glad that, at least, it was patched so that it didn't just kick you out of the game when you lost connection, but it's still a pain in the arse.

 

Meh, Ubisoft haters gonna hate, they have done some crap, they have done some good stuff. What I'm interested is which orifice 95% piracy was pulled out of, that's a pretty hefty claim.

 

How come they know how many pirated games are circulated but not who did it ?
I can't be bothered with most Ubisoft games for their DRM policy, myself.
I suspect this is premptive PR for them not bothering to release a few key titles in the near future.
I concur with the uplay gripes on this page.
Ubi' are just throwing their toys out of their pram for their own PR disaster with the always on DRM, imo.
*ALL* of my friends by their games and often at full price. I don't know any pirates.
My opinion is that claim is 93-95% bum-chowder.

 

The Ubisoft DRM boycott is still in effect. Not sure why they thought it would just go away.