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UBISOFT: 93-95% PC piracy rate means F2P is just as effective

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  • stayontargetstayontarget Member RarePosts: 6,519
    Originally posted by fivoroth
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    I think the piracy numbers tend to be inflated as a large fraction of the people who pirate a given game (or song or whatever) wouldn't have bought it if they couldn't have pirated it.

    This is not 100% true. Quite a lot of people who pirate games might buy the game if they had no other choice. It really depends on your disposable income and how expensive games are in your country. But yeah 95-97% seems ridiculous.

    Piracy has always plagued PC gaming. This is the main reason we are not seeing any AAA PC exclusives. When was the last time you saw a major game release for the PC which was not released on the Xbox360/PS3? The only company that I can think of that is still loyal to the PC platform is BLIZZZZZZZZZZZZARD! And no, MMOs don't count. They don't even deserve to be BBB let alone AAA release.

    Whaaat ?  its not about being loyal, its about reaching a broader audience. 

     

    Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...

  • DrakynnDrakynn Member Posts: 2,030
    Originally posted by fivoroth
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    I think the piracy numbers tend to be inflated as a large fraction of the people who pirate a given game (or song or whatever) wouldn't have bought it if they couldn't have pirated it.

    This is not 100% true. Quite a lot of people who pirate games might buy the game if they had no other choice. It really depends on your disposable income and how expensive games are in your country. But yeah 95-97% seems ridiculous.

    Piracy has always plagued PC gaming. This is the main reason we are not seeing any AAA PC exclusives. When was the last time you saw a major game release for the PC which was not released on the Xbox360/PS3? The only company that I can think of that is still loyal to the PC platform is BLIZZZZZZZZZZZZARD! And no, MMOs don't count. They don't even deserve to be BBB let alone AAA release.

    I think both of you are pulling numbers from the same palce as Yves Guillmot.

    There  is a percentage of pirates who would not buy the game they stole regardless,there's a percentage that will buy thwe game if they decide they liked it  enough after playing the stolen software  and yes there's a percentage that would of bought it if they had no other choice.How big each percentage is no one can know and I doubt there wille ver be a cencus to find out.

    However the figure quoted in the arcticle is pretty ludicrous.

  • itgrowlsitgrowls Member Posts: 2,951

    so basically you are saying piracy in F2P games ( which doesn't exist in F2P games), is justification for any company selling DLC's or restricting content until players pay for that content or subscribe to the game. (subscription because basically that's what the Freemium model of SWTOR will be doing and you mentioned that in your post).

    It's never a good idea to cut off content, ui, or lore from the players. One of the biggest problems with WoW has been cutting off lore it got so bad that they had to at the end of every expansion series, allow players to get all kinds of free easily obtainable raid gear so they could see the lore hidden inside the tier 1 raids. I know I was there for two sets of this happening. (Arguably the only thing Ghostcrawler has done RIGHT in this game.)

    It's not a good idea because 1 it's greedy. 2 the number of people pirating games can easily be offset by a properly secured account system now, and 3 if anyone has a problem with F2P or B2P shops really need to re-evaluate just how much they are really nickling and diming people to death with this DLC thing. it's not right.

  • ToxiaToxia Member UncommonPosts: 1,308

    I think the biggest question is- Exactly how the hell do they know how many people pirate something?

    It's not like they pirate it off THEIR servers or anything.

    So what...they go to torrents and count the people? Doubtfull.

    The Deep Web is sca-ry.

  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383


    Originally posted by fivoroth
    Piracy has always plagued PC gaming. This is the main reason we are not seeing any AAA PC exclusives. When was the last time you saw a major game release for the PC which was not released on the Xbox360/PS3? The only company that I can think of that is still loyal to the PC platform is BLIZZZZZZZZZZZZARD! And no, MMOs don't count. They don't even deserve to be BBB let alone AAA release.

    I don't buy this argument. Major Developers have similar complaints on consoles: Gray market/resells hurt our margins, people pirate via rips and console hacks, can't sell digitally because the console manufacturer takes too steep of a cut, patches take too long and cost too much to have certified.

    I don't doubt that piracy is one large reason that consoles have hamstrung the PC gaming industry, but I don't think it's the sole reason, and probably not even the largest reason. There are many things that make Console development a lot more attractive than PC development, and it starts with unified, consistent hardware and API support. After all, a 360 is still a 360 regardless of if it was sold today or 2005. A PC, however, can have any number of innumerable combinations of hardware - DirectX goes a long way to helping with that, but it's a lot different than having a stable and consistant hardware platform to deal with.

  • KuinnKuinn Member UncommonPosts: 2,072
    Originally posted by Reizla

    Article here: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-22-guillemot-as-many-pc-players-pay-for-f2p-as-boxed-product

    I'm not sure about numbers there in which is stated that only 5-7% of the gamers actually BUY the product and that the rest uses a pirated copy of the game. I'm also not sure if F2P for games in general will be good for the industry. When looking at the F2P MMORPG market and see how much crap comes from publishers like Aeria Games and gPotato.

    This is also in line with the I saw an article about it from BioWare last week here, stating that players want DLC form day #1. IF games in general go F2P, then publishers do need to get their income from other resources, and DLC is the perfect way for that.

     

    I dont trust those numbers, seems just crazy since I dont know many people (anymore) who pirates games.

     

    That leads to another point, it seems like the average age of gamers go up all the time, and older people who go to work usually buys games rather than pirate them like kids who are low on cash. Simple observations I've done since my teens which was more than ten years ago, I dont know many people these days who actively pirate games, back then, they were left and right.

  • fivorothfivoroth Member UncommonPosts: 3,916
    Originally posted by Drakynn
    Originally posted by fivoroth
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    I think the piracy numbers tend to be inflated as a large fraction of the people who pirate a given game (or song or whatever) wouldn't have bought it if they couldn't have pirated it.

    This is not 100% true. Quite a lot of people who pirate games might buy the game if they had no other choice. It really depends on your disposable income and how expensive games are in your country. But yeah 95-97% seems ridiculous.

    Piracy has always plagued PC gaming. This is the main reason we are not seeing any AAA PC exclusives. When was the last time you saw a major game release for the PC which was not released on the Xbox360/PS3? The only company that I can think of that is still loyal to the PC platform is BLIZZZZZZZZZZZZARD! And no, MMOs don't count. They don't even deserve to be BBB let alone AAA release.

    I think both of you are pulling numbers from the same palce as Yves Guillmot.

    There  is a percentage of pirates who would not buy the game they stole regardless,there's a percentage that will buy thwe game if they decide they liked it  enough after playing the stolen software  and yes there's a percentage that would of bought it if they had no other choice.How big each percentage is no one can know and I doubt there wille ver be a cencus to find out.

    However the figure quoted in the arcticle is pretty ludicrous.

    I am not pulling any numbers out of the blue. I don't have any numbers in my post. I have no idea what the numbers for each of these categories are because I haven't see any data and I am not very interested in this.. But yeah that figure in the article to me it seems ridiculous. I don't have any numbers to back up my claim it's just my perception of the situation.

     

    Originally posted by Ridelynn

     


    Originally posted by fivoroth

     

    Piracy has always plagued PC gaming. This is the main reason we are not seeing any AAA PC exclusives. When was the last time you saw a major game release for the PC which was not released on the Xbox360/PS3? The only company that I can think of that is still loyal to the PC platform is BLIZZZZZZZZZZZZARD! And no, MMOs don't count. They don't even deserve to be BBB let alone AAA release.


     

    I don't buy this argument. Major Developers have similar complaints on consoles: Gray market/resells hurt our margins, people pirate via rips and console hacks, can't sell digitally because the console manufacturer takes too steep of a cut, patches take too long and cost too much to have certified.

    I don't doubt that piracy is one large reason that consoles have hamstrung the PC gaming industry, but I don't think it's the sole reason, and probably not even the largest reason. There are many things that make Console development a lot more attractive than PC development, and it starts with unified, consistent hardware and API support. After all, a 360 is still a 360 regardless of if it was sold today or 2005. A PC, however, can have any number of innumerable combinations of hardware - DirectX goes a long way to helping with that, but it's a lot different than having a stable and consistant hardware platform to deal with.

    That's true. Piracy is not the only reason. I think it's the main one but certainly not the only one.

     

    Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.

  • IfrianMMOIfrianMMO Member UncommonPosts: 252

    Call me a terrorist but i always download my games to give them a test run, and then , depending on how much i enjoy the first hours, i buy the game or not.

    I.E: It was about 10 years since i last played a soccer game, so i downloaded fifa 2013, i liked it, and the next day i bought the actual game so i can play online and partecipate with the community.

    As many state, if they allowed me to play a demo or a slightly limited amount of the game i would not have to do this.

    P.S: I know Fifa 2013 had a demo but it was very limited and i couldn´t appreciate the game that way.

    I need to be able to do a bit of everything, even if in a very basic fashion, to see the potential a game has.

     

     

     

     

    image
  • Nhoj1983Nhoj1983 Member UncommonPosts: 185
    Sad thing is that even companies that don't drm(see witcher 2) get 2-3 times their sales pirated.  People can be jerks... That's just reality I guess.  If it can be done.. people will.
  • fivorothfivoroth Member UncommonPosts: 3,916
    Originally posted by IfrianMMO

    Call me a terrorist but i always download my games to give them a test run, and then , depending on how much i enjoy the first hours, i buy the game or not.

    I.E: It was about 10 years since i last played a soccer game, so i downloaded fifa 2013, i liked it, and the next day i bought the actual game so i can play online and partecipate with the community.

    As many state, if they allowed me to play a demo or a limited amount of the game i would not have to do this.

     

     

    I completely agree. I always need to try the game before I play it unless I have some previous experience with the game series. But I usually I will not torrent a game if there's no demo. I will just wait till someone I know recommends it, I will probably read on it, watch gameplay movies or wait till it's on sale or the price is reduced. That's what I like about my Xbox. They always give you demos to try the games before you buy them. It is very integrated and you easily can see what the new games are and play their demos. Sometimes you get said demos even before the game is released (1-2 weeks before!)!

    Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.

  • XasapisXasapis Member RarePosts: 6,337

    It's funny to see a company go after the people who wouldn't have bought their products one way or the other, instead of making life easier for their actual customers.

     

    As for the PC vs console piracy, once upon a time when consoles were at their early stage of acceptance, the piracy was low. Nowadays though, the situation is reversed, if for no other reason but for the sheer numeric sales difference between the two media.

  • CaldrinCaldrin Member UncommonPosts: 4,505

    At the end of the day if a company makes a really good game people will buy it... if they make average or shitty games then people will probally pirate it or just not play it at all..

     

    You will always have a certain % of piracy but i really dont think there is anything they can do about it and i really dont think its as high as 95% LOL cant really remember the last time i downloaded a dodgy copy of a game..

     

    Steam deal tend to be too good for me to even need to think about doing that..

  • fs23otmfs23otm Member RarePosts: 506

    What everyone is forgetting is UBISOFT is a multi platform company.

    Gamestop selling used games is a form of piracy. None of the money gamestop makes on those used games goes back to any company besides gamestop.

    I think every game should have DRM.. and force people to pay for games.

  • CaldrinCaldrin Member UncommonPosts: 4,505
    Originally posted by fs23otm

    What everyone is forgetting is UBISOFT is a multi platform company.

    Gamestop selling used games is a form of piracy. None of the money gamestop makes on those used games goes back to any company besides gamestop.

     

    that is not piracy UBI have already made money from sellnig that game..

     

    Thats like saying game or movie rental is piracy.

  • fs23otmfs23otm Member RarePosts: 506
    Originally posted by Caldrin
    Originally posted by fs23otm

    What everyone is forgetting is UBISOFT is a multi platform company.

    Gamestop selling used games is a form of piracy. None of the money gamestop makes on those used games goes back to any company besides gamestop.

     

    that is not piracy UBI have already made money from sellnig that game..

     

    Thats like saying game or movie rental is piracy.

    No companies who RENT games and MOVIEs pay a fee to get those games and movie in for rental.

    Gamestop is commiting legal piracy. That is the reason EA started requiring you to use the game codes to play online.

  • HarafnirHarafnir Member UncommonPosts: 1,350
    Computer games make more money than movies music and books combined... And that on only a 5% buy rate? Ooook. yeah. Those numbers have never been true, any year since the first computer games in the late 70s. It is pure spindoctoring to support a flawed statement. The piracy rate has never been smaller than it is today, mostly due to access to internet and the sophistication of the games making them harder and harder to hack. No, not because the "protection" is so advanced, it never is, but the because the game gets unstable when tampered with.  But then, UBISoft is known to have the worst DRMs in history making it almost impossible to even play the game when you have bought it (several times unable to even contact the internet so their little "safety" can tell their servers its a real storebought game) and your ability to play a UBISoft game is more up to luck than your morals... I guess they have to lie to protect their insanely bad decisions.

    "This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
    It should be thrown with great force"

  • tom_goretom_gore Member UncommonPosts: 2,001

    We only need to take Skyrim as an example - a game that can be pirated easily as it's a single-player game.

    This game sold about 1.4 million physical copies on PC. If we argue that ~50% of the sales on PC are digital, it means the total sales is somewhere around 2.8 million. If only 7% of the players bought it, it means Skyrim was downloaded over 40 million times.

    Means there are a lot of PC gamers out there, or that UBISOFT is again pulling numbers out of their arse.

    I would guess the latter.

  • morbuskabismorbuskabis Member Posts: 290

    This BS from Ubisoft seems to me like a other try to get somthing like SOPA, ACTA or PPT into the heads of the public to get some more $.

    This might be intresting to you. This guy talks about piracy and how loads of companys actually supported those bittorrent and stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwC5bGGGCRU

    image -Massive-Industries- Heavy Duty

  • Ex0dUs101Ex0dUs101 Member UncommonPosts: 273

    Ubisoft lost all credibility in the PC market a long long time ago. Theyve done nothing but spout garbage for many years now, consistently ignored the market and what users want, then tried to blame it all on everyone else's actions. This article is just another example of how ignorant they are.

    Ubisoft and EA are the two main companies I will never buy from ever again, and its been that way for a long time now, with no one to blame but themselves.

  • bcbullybcbully Member EpicPosts: 11,838
    This only 5-7% can't be true can it? If it is could someone pm me the free game link you 95%ers have?
    "We see fundamentals and we ape in"
  • jpnzjpnz Member Posts: 3,529

    The 93-95% is factually false.

    If we look at the sale of games on Steam / Origin / DD / GMG etc, it doesn't add up.

    Course that doesn't stop from exec at Ubisoft saying stupid things though.

    Gdemami -
    Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.

  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798

    not sure why this thread got necroed 2 months later but it was aleady debunked

     

    Originally posted by MadnessRealm
    Originally posted by Reizla

    Article here: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-22-guillemot-as-many-pc-players-pay-for-f2p-as-boxed-product

    Don't believe those numbers, they were pulled out of his own delusioned ass.

    http://www.giantbomb.com/news/ubisoft-ditching-its-intrusive-drm-for-pc-games/4350/

    When pressed Ubisoft for more details about Guillemot’s statistics, I didn’t get much in response.

    “That was an internal estimate for a few of Ubisoft’s popular PC titles like Assassin’s Creed and Driver, based on our own measurements,” the company told me a few weeks back. “It’s similar to broader external estimates from groups like the UKIE [Association for UK Interactive Entertainment], and to some recent examples of popular PC games from other companies.”

     

  • YamotaYamota Member UncommonPosts: 6,593
    I am confused, how can you have piracy in an MMORPG where you need to register and log in online?
  • YamotaYamota Member UncommonPosts: 6,593
    Originally posted by zymurgeist
    Originally posted by fs23otm
    Originally posted by Caldrin
    Originally posted by fs23otm

    What everyone is forgetting is UBISOFT is a multi platform company.

    Gamestop selling used games is a form of piracy. None of the money gamestop makes on those used games goes back to any company besides gamestop.

     

    that is not piracy UBI have already made money from sellnig that game..

     

    Thats like saying game or movie rental is piracy.

    No companies who RENT games and MOVIEs pay a fee to get those games and movie in for rental.

    Gamestop is commiting legal piracy. That is the reason EA started requiring you to use the game codes to play online.

     So used book stores are piracy? Used book stores have been around and legal almost as long as books. Your premise fails. EA  using game codes wasn't to prevent sales of used games.  It was a piracy prevention measure.

    It was used for both, Obviously if two persons buy a copy rather than one person buys it and then sells it to another will mean less money for EA and EA is all about getting more money. Be it by reducing piracy or second hand selling of games.

    And selling used books, movies and games is NOT piracy. Tons of stores do it and I havent ever heard them being accused for piracy for doing it.

  • QSatuQSatu Member UncommonPosts: 1,795
    Originally posted by Toxia

    I think the biggest question is- Exactly how the hell do they know how many people pirate something?

    It's not like they pirate it off THEIR servers or anything.

    So what...they go to torrents and count the people? Doubtfull.

    this is exactly what they do. They make up those numbers to show that dRM is good, now that f2p is awesome etc. they create facts for their own agendas.

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