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

[JDR13]

What is interesting to me is how many people purchased the Steam version vs the GOG version.

Anyone know what the budget was for the game?

Obviously we are only looking at PC sales here and in the first 6 months, but the going price of the game was $39.99 IIRC on all distribution platforms. So that's roughly $10M in revenue (obviously some of that goes to Steam or the other distributors for non-GOG sales).

I'd be shocked if the budget was less than 10 Million for The Witcher 2.

Brb…

…couldn't find any reliable numbers with a quick search. Maybe someone else knows more.

 

[BillSeurer]

I'd be shocked if the budget was less than 10 Million for The Witcher 2.

Brb…

So they didn't even break even on that. Sigh.

 

[blatantninja]

So they didn't even break even on that. Sigh.

Well that's just the first 6 months and only PC. The note at the end says they've sold a total of 2M units, so revenue of somewhere around $80M. Even if they only took home half of that, $40M should more than cover their budget.

 

[azarhal]

Yes, but I was talking about the PC version and GOG in particular. Your link shows combined numbers for PC and Xbox.

Still, it's good to know that TWII continued to do well more than 6 months after release.

1+ millions sales is REALLY good regardless of what the exec from Ubisoft/EA want you to believe.

As for your question. There was only ~40k GOG version of the Witcher 2 sold (article is old might have changed now). Also, the dev cost for the Witcher 2 is estimated as similar to TW1, this mean ~6 millions Euro. Games cost a lot less to make in Poland than in the US.

 

[joxer]

Seems not only it costs less, but developer/publisher in Poland is less greedy than in US.
Perhaps they should sack their CEO and hire Ubisoft's CEO instead? I don't think they lost their mind to do that.

 

[Nameless one]

Yes, but I was talking about the PC version and GOG in particular. Your link shows combined numbers for PC and Xbox.

Still, it's good to know that TWII continued to do well more than 6 months after release.

I couldn't find official numbers but around 1/3 of that that number are xbox sales.
What is important to me is that they sold more than kingdoms of amalure(1.3 million copies) that also came out for PS3.

 

[JDR13]

What is important to me is that they sold more than kingdoms of amalure(1.3 million copies) that also came out for PS3.

It would have been a crime if TW2 didn't outsell KoA.

 

[Fnord]

Ubisoft seem to love making statements like this. This is not the first time they do it, and soon you will see them try to use this statement to justify something else that they will do, or explain away something that is obviously their fault. Along the line of how they did it when they introduced their horrible DRM. Or their way of explaining that their DRM was good, but PC gaming was dying, and that was why their games did not sell all that well.

 

[bloodlover]

I couldn't care less if Ubi goes bankrupt tomorrow. My only issue is that they almost killed the HOMM series and those are one of my fav. games ever.

I still play HOMM 3 LAN with friends from time to time.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Ubisoft seem to love making statements like this.

Ubisoft - in this way - more and more reminds me of Mr. Kotick … with these statements.
It's as if a clone of him had been silently installed at Ubisoft's top management.