Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

Joined
Oct 13, 2007
Messages
7,313
DArt, you are talking about a company that used a scene cracked .exe in a patch to fix one of their games…

Yeah, I have no love for Ubisoft - but not even they can be experiencing that ridiculous level of piracy. Something is taken out of context or manipulated somehow.

I'm not sure what they mean by "Boxed PC games" - but if it means the games they sell through non-digital vendors worldwide, then I simply don't believe in that 95% number.
 
Yeah, I have no love for Ubisoft - but not even they can be experiencing that ridiculous level of piracy. Something is taken out of context or manipulated somehow.

I personally suspect that the shitty DRM turned off PC players away and they lost 95% of their old market. They want to believe that people are pirating the games now (telling shareholders people aren't buying your game is bad "marketing").

This would also explain the switch to F2P, they believe that if the game is "free", this market will come back.

This show a major disconnect between the business and the market (not surprising).

edit:
Rereading the "quotes" seems to be that the guy just did the following association: 5-7% of F2Pers use the cash shop. This mean that only 95% of people who play our $60 games pay for it too! OMG 95% piracy rate!
 
Joined
Oct 13, 2007
Messages
7,313
Most people who buy games don't know shit about what goes on behind the scenes, and they don't equate Ubisoft with the protection scheme.

I can swallow that most core gamers might be tempted to pirate - but almost all of the mainstream? Seems too extreme.
 
I can believe the piracy rate - see http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

But in the same article, it mentions the Richochet analysis that "As we believe that we are decreasing the number of pirates downloading the game with our DRM fixes, combining the increased sales number together with the decreased downloads, we find 1 additional sale for every 1,000 less pirated downloads. "

In other words, pirates gonna pirate, they ain't gonna buy. Just focus on your paying customers FFS.
 
Joined
Aug 12, 2007
Messages
542
Location
Englandland
In other words, pirates gonna pirate, they ain't gonna buy. Just focus on your paying customers FFS.

Except paying customers eventually give in. Piracy is increasing. I used to never pirate, and now I love it. I got sick of subsidizing the habits of people with little brains and poor taste. The only way to fight back is to join the opposition, because paying just helps them out. Since the only good games are coming out of the indie niche scene it doesn’t even matter (and by good games I mean the ones I think are good).

I hope they all burn, from UbiSoft to Blizzard. I don’t hold anything against any publisher from UbiSoft to Blizzard, besides a general dislike of their games, but if they all go under all the people I despise will not have their shitty games to pirate. Maybe they will read a book and stop being such fucking morons, or maybe they will go outside and play and stop being fat stupid fucks.

The normal people just need to convince that 5% who still pay to stop feeding the trolls. This train isn’t going to end until 2 or 3% more stop paying and start a-thieving. Those dickheads in the F2P games are killing my dreams though. Turbine has the audacity to charge the same for their shitty little expansions as a new game costs, and they don’t even throw in a free month of subscription. That is pretty much saying, “Fuck you, sane people! Give the reasonable amount of money you would have spent to someone else.”

But, how long until the 5% paying dickheads subsidizing the F2P market decide they don’t want to foot the bill for the freeloaders? This shit isn’t just going to affect the video game market; this is a question for the world. The answer is things get worse before they get better, which is fine with me. When you’ve eaten enough bitter you get a taste for it, and misery loves company.
 
Joined
Jul 20, 2012
Messages
41
Honestly, I would have long ago purchased HOMM VI if it wasn't for the DRM stories. As it stands, every time the game comes up for sale, I push it aside.
The DRM is not so bad actually, it looks strange and feels silly, but you simply get used to it. But the problem is that DRM exe is still buggy although is already version 2.0.6 (uplay.exe in fact). DRM's cloudsync doesn't work as intended and they know it, but still it is active by default and if you don't disable it, your savegames vanish for good from time to time. Oh and sync process takes ages to finish even when you have only one save game with size of just a few KBs. That problem is constantly reported for ages and is still not fixed.
Then once per month (so far) you can't connect to Ubisoft's server, usually happens on weekend when you're home and can play games all day long. Well, this weekend day you - can't. Probably because someone in Ubisoft got drunk the night before and now can't restart the server that is down or something like that.
HoMM6 is good and I'm currently enjoying it. It's not a masterpiece though, but is fun. If you can have some more patience I suggest waiting for the next patch that fixes a few not critical, but very annoying things. The patch should be out soon.

DArt, you are talking about a company that used a scene cracked .exe in a patch to fix one of their games…
ROTFL
Didn't know this. Thanks for the link, when I get pissed off enough, I might smuggle it onto Ubisoft forum. ;)

EDIT:
On RPS link there is an actual screenshot of the patch opened with hex editor, OMG, if I didn't see this I'd say someone is pulling my nose:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/07/18/ubisoft-having-a-crack/
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Alrik… Um… 95% of 10 year old kids are - criminals?
So in any family with 2 children at least one of them is a pirate? And there is high probability both are.
Cmon. :D
I dont know how current generation of children is doing but when I was 8 year old and received my first computer (C64 + tapedrive) the first thing I learned (my friend teached me) was how to pirate games.

Over 95% of my games and everyone elses I knew were pirated. And that was before the internet. Nowadays you dont even have to visit friends to pirate game. You can just d/l them from internets!

It wasnt until 20 years later that I started to buy games. But that was because I had more money than time to play them.

If kid with weekly allowance of 20 euros has option to get game for free or save money for it for two weeks he will do everything to make the former true. Depending on platform. Some platforms are easier to pirate than others.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
3,160
Location
Europa Universalis
Originally Posted by Nameless one:
Maybe if they had less idiotic DRM people would actually buy their games.

History shows this is a false idea.

Well, I stopped buying their games when they turned on their 'always online' DRM. I was going to buy AC2, probably 3 and HOMM N. And I know several who did the same. In fact one major reason I didn't buy D3 either was the 'always online' part - I am very much opposed to that …'ideology'. Anyway, I really do think that their DRM has harmed their sales.
 
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
2,128
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
See anybody can pull facts and stats out of there asses when they have no proof to back there claims. Ubisoft's CEO just uses this argument to push and justify his agenda.

The agenda of his is to eliminate all pc support and investing by any means possible. Something he has almost succeed in the last couple of years.

Lets not forget this is the same company who claimed there drm hasn't been cracked and still works.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,073
Location
Spudlandia
History shows this is a false idea.

Many people don't buy their game just because of their DRM.Big reason why they don't have so much first week sales is declining quality of their games but biggest reason in my opinion why people avoid their games on steam sale when they are offered for next to nothing is solely their DRM.They shouldn't blame this on piracy problem is in their backyard.
 
Joined
May 21, 2012
Messages
1,436
Location
Sto plains
Go on Ubisoft, go on. F2P all the way. Go go go. Good riddance.

(No disrespect for F2P, it can work for both players and company. But it needs the right quality to work. Ubisoft will be unable to provide that. Their management is to clueless for that.)
 
Joined
May 18, 2012
Messages
2,315
Then I'm sure it's not right ;)

Well, you are probably right, if you consider such a places like China and India ( where most of the population with computers and internet reside ), where a lot of people loves to play these games but none pay for them, it is probably an understatement. It might be more like 96%.
 
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Messages
6,292
Well, you are probably right, if you consider such a places like China and India ( where most of the population with computers and internet reside ), where a lot of people loves to play these games but none pay for them, it is probably an understatement. It might be more like 96%.

AFAIK, those numbers are supposed to be worldwide numbers.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,893
Location
Old Europe
I'm not sure what they mean by "Boxed PC games"

Retail, of course.

Maybe if they had less idiotic DRM people would actually buy their games.I hope they bankrupt so that HoMM and Anno licences go to better publisher.

History shows this is a false idea.

I agree here, because GREED is a very powerful human factor !

So powerful actually that it because one of the Christian "deadly sins" !

I used to never pirate, and now I love it.

How do you pirate board games ?

I dont know how current generation of children is doing but when I was 8 year old and received my first computer (C64 + tapedrive) the first thing I learned (my friend teached me) was how to pirate games.

That's basically what I meant :

The older a gamer becomes, the more responsible he or she gets.
Especially if they have a family. They have learned by then what Responsibility means; and how difficult it is to get money from a job.

Youths and children don't know what responsibility is. That's imho one of the reasons why they are bullying. I see bullying as an expression of lack of growing to know what responsibility actually is.

Games are to them probably like icecream; if you can have it for free they'd naturally take it !

Buying for things must be learned. Buying for things is acknowledging that the other one lives from the money I give to him or her.

The only bad thing is the middle man in that : Managers reworking the company so that they get most of the profits and the actual workers almost nothing; or copyright companies (like the German GEMA or publishers of copyrighted work like EA, Universal, Virgin Records etc.) growing into becoming parasires which such the IP out from the original workers, give them almost nothing back, but succeed in making great profits out from that.

I think it will be a better place if the "middle man" is no more. It would be like going directly to your local farmer and buy your vegetables there.

But still, there would be people left in the middle tir business; workers working in groceries need to earn their money, too.

I believe it all went wrong when greed came in, and the middle man became a parasite.

And underlying on all of this is the dogma of "Everyone Is Unequal."
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,893
Location
Old Europe
Back
Top Bottom