Up to 95% of Ubisoft's PC Games Are Pirated, Says CEO
Ubisoft thinks F2P games on PC are the way to go until the console makers churn out their next-generation machines.
It should have come as no surprise that Ubisoft eventually broke down and launched its own digital distribution platform for its PC games. The company has been at the forefront of fighting piracy on the platform for years, implementing controversial DRM efforts that have prevented its customers from playing their games, and as seen just last month, opened PCs to a security risk. Offering a Steam-like client would seemingly resolve Ubisoft's piracy issue. After all, it works for Valve and all its partners, right?
That may not be good enough. According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, 93 to 95-percent of the company's PC games are pirated despite its DRM efforts. That's a staggering number, and explains why the company focuses heavily on the console sector. Still, there's money to be made on the PC platform as Zynga has shown to all the industry skeptics. PC gaming is once again back on the rise, and publishers are taking note of comrades in the East and releasing free-to-play titles or similar tiers in their current games. Ubisoft is looking to head in that direction as well.
Why? Guillemot makes an interesting point. "It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue," he told GamesIndustry International at Gamescom 2012. "On PC it's only around five to seven percent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven percent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 percent 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."
F2P is the way to develop the PC market, he said. The company can even generate revenue from countries where Ubisoft couldn't previously, places where the products were played but not bought. The F2P model will also help strengthen Ubisoft's brands, make them last a lot longer than before. Even more, F2P titles are cheaper to produce and distribute -- there's no box or disc to manufacture and ship across the globe.
Still, games must be tailored to fit the audience's needs. "We also take content which we've developed in the past, graphics etc, and we can make cheaper games and improve them over time," he said. "What's very important is that we change the content and make it a better fit to the customer as time goes on."
Offering F2P titles will also help Ubisoft float through the migration from the current console generation to the next, its core business. "We must be careful because the consoles are coming," he warned. "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."
The consoles are coming! The consoles are coming! Sounds like a monster movie. Should PC gamers be scared? Probably not.
Serial number - Okay
Keeping the game DVD in your drive - Annoying
Online registration - Intrusive
Online activation/validation - Very annoying
Having to remain online to play a single player game - COMPLETELY INSANE
Fixed.
Serial number - Okay
Keeping the game DVD in your drive - Annoying
Online registration - Intrusive
Online activation/validation - Very annoying
Having to remain online to play a single player game - COMPLETELY INSANE
Fixed.
Make a game worth buying and the talks of piracy suddenly stop.
I no longer buy Ubisoft titles, and have not for a few years now, many of my friends pirate the titles because of the strict DRM Ubisoft push, I do not bother because mostly the games they make are crap anyways.
Come on ARENANET and NCSoft, I give you my money
I fix consoles and see many modded xbox360's ,Wii only console i have not seen modded is ps3.
The reason why Ubisoft games are pirated is the really BAD DRM causes the game to crash and run unstable so people buy game and the game crashes they look to patches, still no fix so the download game with no drm and voila no crashing, now who's fault is that i wonder?.
There is piracy on consoles but it's a full order of magnitude lower than it is on PC.
Shitty DRM is not an excuse for pirating a game. It's at best an excuse for bypassing the DRM. If you're not willing to pay for a game then don't play it. Don't try to find some shitty justification for piracy because there is none.
i dont pirate your games, i just dont play them period.
you make playing your game payed significantly harder than pirating it, most companies drm is annoying, and can clog your system, yours kicks you from single player for a small hickup in the connection to the internet... no crap your game will be pirated.
if i ever played a ubi soft game on the pc, i would pay for it and play the pirate copy.
but until that insanity ends, never playing a ubi game out of spite... pure unadulterated spite.
At no point did they mention anything about lost sales, merely percentages. They're probably comparing the number of unique installations which phone home to the total number of sold and/or registered copies. It's an old trick but it's also a valid one. Even with some statistical adjustment it could still be as high as 75% which is no less astounding.
So 95% piracy, maybe is due to their use of DRM and other shitty anticopy methods, that in the end get's bypassed and only works to hinder the ones that actually payed the games.
Also waiting for next gen console ?? Yeah as if there isn't piracy in console market..........
The solution is quite simple, drop anticopy methods ( every method gets cracked ) and spend that HUGE money into lowering games prices.
Also and the most important thing, don't treat your customers as if they are all dumb, no more BF3 new maps that are already on the disk, or "new" maps from previous BF, or Assasin Creed "new" mission that is already on the DVD you bought, but you have to pay extra cash to play it
I'll get games when I can download a simple crack to avoid activation and NOCD patch to play it. Not if I have to pirate a whole game or go through complicated procedures to install the damn thing.
For me a game has to have the following:
1. Be entertaining
2. Long game play preferably a large open world
3. Have easily bypassed DRM
The main problem with the DRM is it can break the game especially on a new version of Windows. GTA IV does not work in Windows 7 until you bypass the DRM. What makes the always online DRM unacceptable is that the game stops working when they decide to shutdown the servers. I expect to be able to play the game twenty years from now.
A system designed to make the piracy harder is fine, however when the customers are the ONLY party who suffers from it - Something is seriously wrong. Is it really that hard to imagine why the customer who had issues with the system choose not to pay for the frustration of the drm the next time they want a title?
Need proof? Any of the thousands of angry forum threads on Ubi's forum about the drm should be enough to understand why Ubi's sales is dwindling like a rock. It would seem they now don't even have the courage to admit their mistake and rather use a generic excuse for the failure - They seem to hope some of the less enlightened investors will think the piracy symptoms is the problem rather than the cause of it!
Simply put - Their extreme drm have pushed more people towards piracy. In order to enjoy an Ubi title the way it was meant to be enjoyed when the developers created is by avoiding the drm issues. That leaves piracy and that is so wrong on so many levels.
I for one haven't craved in just yet but its on the edge to be part of the next percent, after buying the last 5-6 titles with the online drm I can sadly for the first time fully understand why people who previously purchased their games now choose to pirate them, all in order to get more enjoyment than frustration.
To UBI - Its easier to blame piracy than look in the mirror, isn't it!