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

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Ubisoft is at it again with talks about piracy and there love of F2P games. There entire booth at Games Com 2012 as I mentioned before was F2P browser games.

I knew there was a reason why pc gamers hate them and console players just seem to adore them.

The CEO of games giant Ubisoft has revealed an interesting parallel in the company’s business models. Speaking at Gamescom this week, Yves Guillemot said that around 95% of players of the company’s boxed PC games are pirates. Equally, of all players of the company’s free-to-play games who can voluntarily part with cash to obtain a better experience, 95% choose not to pay a dime. Nevertheless, the latter model can be a great opportunity to beat piracy.

In recent years games company Ubisoft have hit the headlines not only for creating some great games, but also having some of the most intrusive DRM schemes the industry has to offer.

For example, the first implementation of the DRM in the PC version of Driver: San Francisco required users users to be permanently connected to the Internet to play, although user backlash meant that the company backtracked on the policy.

What has become apparent in recent times through this and similar experiences is that DRM only hurts paying customers and does little to stop pirates from releasing hassle-free versions of Ubisoft games online. But with DRM or without, according to Ubisoft piracy levels are massive.

Speaking with GamesIndustry International editor Matt Martin at Gamescom this week, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot indicated that piracy levels of their standard ‘boxed’ games is currently sitting at between 93% and 95%.

Representatives for Ubisoft have complained bitterly about piracy in the past, and have openly blamed it for the company choosing not to release games to the PC market. Interestingly though, there is another way.

Guillemot says that the free-to-play model (F2P) has been a great tool for Ubisoft to market their products to areas of the world where piracy of PC games is at such a level that turning a profit has proven impossible.

“We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it,” Guillemot said. “The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn’t previously – places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.”

The Ubisoft CEO said that the F2P framework is a good way to get closer to customers, hopefully with a view to enticing them to make the optional and hopefully repeating payments the model needs to survive. Interestingly, the percentage of people who pirate Ubisoft’s boxed products matches almost exactly with the percentage who chose not to pay in the F2P model.

“On PC it’s only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it’s only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It’s around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage,” Guillemot said.

Although the choose-not-to-pay crowd is large, good revenues are still available. As revealed by Electronic Arts last year after it targeted South Korea with FIFA Online, F2P can prove lucrative, even more so than traditional models.

“We gave the FIFA disc away free,” CEO John Riccitiello said. “But, instead of charging people for software, we charged small payments within the game: 5p for injury updates, 10p for a new strip. We found that 10 per cent of all Korean households downloaded FIFA online and the consumer paid us more online than they would have done buying the game in a store.”

See to me F2P=No Sp=I have to play only online with other idiots=pay to win sometimes. I don't see the appeal to me as a gamer.
 
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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.
 
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I've already commented those claims about piracy on Ubisoft forums in a thread that appeared earlier today under the title "We can all forgive Ubisoft".
Forgive their slapping customers my arse! I'll just copy my post here.
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...give-Ubisoft?p=8552601&viewfull=1#post8552601

93-95% rate? Does that mean cca 94% players are pirates? For god's sakes… And where did they get those percents? You'd need a dozen of fully populated planets to cover numbers you can draw from that.
Those percents are just exaggerated.

Arthyen, ME series is just dumbed-down RPG/FPS mix and adding multiplayer to the third game was expected. It's odd MP didn't exist in ME2. It has nothing to do with piracy and besides both ME1 and ME2 were selling like a cure, everyone just wanted to buy them, you sure many ppl pirated them?

The thing noone wants to say is this - if your game rocks, everyone will buy it, if it sux, noone will buy it. When noone wants to buy a half-finished product, usually a shallow no fun grind-fest, instead of sackinga manager or CEO it's easier to blame it on piracy.

So instead of making games great so they sell more, we got the draconic DRM instead. I don't see uplay system as a negative one, the problem is that it's unreliable. Cloudsync doesn't work correctly for ages now, in last couple of months uplay didn't work twice at all and besides the security hole in browser add-in was not just a small problem. If uplay wasn't a problem of it's own, noone would say a bad word about it. But when you buy a game, you expect bugs in that game, not in DRM itself! And now, when ppl say "we won't buy another Ubisoft game", is it really because of a buggy game or buggy DRM?

And sorry, but I will not forgive Ubisoft. Why? Because they refuse to fix bugs first but instead they waste time by preaching about piracy all over internet. Please do open somewhere a poll which gaming company is the worst of them all. #1 will be Ubisoft and just after it goes EA. Don't just trust me, do make that poll please.
 
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Just had a massive mis-reading :

Yves Guillemot said that around 95% of buyers of the company’s boxed PC games are pirates.
 
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Just had a massive mis-reading :

He is basically calling every person who buys there games a pirate in his mind. At least on the pc. What logic right that's how he justify's there drm and pc's disdain obviously.:lol:
 
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Honestly…no one cares what Ubisoft has to say.

Well many do as do I since they hold the rights to some games not found anywhere else.
 
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no, they didn't say it was 95% of buyers are pirates, its 95% of players, and that they can still make money from that 5% of F2P paying customers.

In a way this article seems to imply that their heavy DRM is a waste of time, although it doesn't seem to go that far.

the 1/20 number they cite (without a source) is 10x better than the number of people estimated to click on spam.
 
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Either they don't care about consumers' opinion or maybe didn't notice the thread yet - it's under HoMM6 subforum and not under general/offtopic. ;)

I think this is a hint towards what's real - and what is not :

HOMM players are imho far more dedicated to "their" series - because it is a niche product. Imho. I might be wrong, but this is a guess.

What i also almost assume us that the level of piracy is very much depending on the age.

I wouldn't be suprised it it turned out to be (and this is just a guess ! ) :

- age 10 - 20 -> 95 % pirates
- age 21 - 30 -> 80 % pirates
- age 31 - 40 -> 70 % pirates
- age 41 - 60 -> 50 - 60 % pirates

I really wouldn't be surprised if it would in reality[/i] turn out to be like that.

But the older generations of gamers are currently imho *not* a desired target group !

"The industry" still develops maily for the younger audiences !

With sentences/statements like 95 % of all gamers are pirates" I feel like a lawnmover just went over a lawn, cutting everything/i] in sight. Rare species and rare plants equally like the Dandelion, which grows *everywhere*. Or the Giant Hogweed, which overgrows virtually EVERYTHING.

Lawnmover tactic : "One size fits it all". There is no detailed research on age groups, for example. Or on how many money actual buyers have available for spending. ("Piracy as a result of the economic crisis ? Oh no no no no, this must not be ! This would be a breach in our argumentation !")


A similar thing could be true fior countries. The entry doesn't hint at all towards which countries have more piracy than others. The entry regarding EA hints to be South Korea to be one of those countries ? I don't know. I would really like to see numbers.

Edit : Another thing not discussed at all is the element of greed. Greed makes people not pay for something.
 
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Well many do as do I since they hold the rights to some games not found anywhere else.

I stopped playing them when they started to have shitty DRM.

I don't feel like I'm missing anything anymore.
 
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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
 
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I stopped playing them when they started to have shitty DRM.

I don't feel like I'm missing anything anymore.

Stupid DRM and franchise destroying started around same time so you didn't.
Most of Ubi's games have some sort of alternative except silent hunter no other company makes submarine simulations although after very bugy and streamlined SH5 series is dead already.
 
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If Ubisoft's piracy levels are at 95% despite their draconian DRM, that should tell you something about the effectiveness of DRM. Waste of money.
 
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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

Hey ! You know how I meant it ! ;)
 
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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.
 
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It will be interesting to see how many of their download PC games were sold during their massive discount period few days ago. Driver San Fransisco was for £1 (£0.90 with a discount code) and I was not interested in buying it becasue of the DRM.

It would also be interesting to compare the sales of Far Cry 2 (which almost had no DRM) with say Driver or Conviction with their stupid DRM, I am sure Far Cry 2 had more sales.

The issue is their poor games and their constant online DRM. They really should have been more clever to justify moving to F2P than to blame it on piracy.
 
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I will hereby enjoy Captain Morgan with my Assassin's Creed.

Drink responsibly, captains orders.
 
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