9 ms·

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

26 points by anons2011 14y ago

debacle 14y ago
Ergo, 95% of your users are not your customers.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  And yet the 95% enjoy a far higher quality product than the 5% that actually pay, when it comes to Ubisoft games.
- astrodust 14y ago
  It could be that a lot of customers buy the boxed product, then install the warez version because it doesn't have any DRM associated with it. This doesn't clarify how they know the games are pirated. Ubisoft is one of the worst offenders lately when it comes to treating their customers like criminals. Even products bought through Steam have all kinds of added on DRM and CD-Key nonsense.
  - AnIrishDuck 14y ago
    I refuse to buy Ubisoft products because of the DRM. I'm not going to pirate them, but I sure as hell won't do business with a company that constantly treats me like a criminal. I've already passed on several games because of this. Some game publishers believe that you can turn 1 out of 1000 pirates into paying customers [1]; it stuns me that Ubisoft ignores how invasive DRM can turn away a significant fraction of potential customers. 1. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350 http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350
  - debacle 14y ago
    I was speaking specifically of the F2P users. Pirates are neither users not customers.
djt 14y ago
I wonder if charging $5 for the game would lead to a massive increase in the % that pay. Steam did a lot of testing around this, hence having F2P (TF2) and $20 games with discounts (L4D etc)
- Splines 14y ago
  Ubisoft last weekend offered some of their games for $1. I'd bet those games sold like hot-cakes. They also sold most of their catalog for $1 a few years ago (for about a day completely by accident), I wonder what their sales numbers were around that time.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
lucisferre 14y ago
I checked both this article and the articles referenced in it and could not find a single place where they back that number up with any hard research. Willing to bet there wasn't any.
- citricsquid 14y ago
  Here is an article from a developer that provided information on piracy numbers (and claimed 70 - 90% on a DRM free game): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of... edit: source of the 90% (or revised 82%): http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ (sorry bsphil!)
  - bsphil 14y ago
    Which is also a completely unsourced number.
    - citricsquid 14y ago
      It's an estimate with a solid base: http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
      - bsphil 14y ago
        Sorry, wasn't able to find that from the original link. I take back my last comment. I guess it boils down to how many of those pirates you think were ever potential customers. Assuming piracy was theoretically impossible, how many would've purchased it rather than not play at all?
        irishcoffee 14y ago
        Not many, I'd make a completely un-verifiable estimate of 5% or less.
      - nahname 14y ago
buster 14y ago
I really don't believe that number. Even when i was a poor pupil and student and pirated stuff, never ever was my games collection 95% pirated. And that was when most games weren't bound to having an internet connection or used multiplayer on the internet.
- shardling 14y ago
  I imagine that the global amount of piracy would be very different than, say, the piracy rate in the U.S.
stephengillie 14y ago
“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,” [Ubisoft CEO Yves] Guillemot said. Their customers convert from free-to-paying and from pirate-to-paying at the same rate. Releasing a game as free-to-play doesn't cut into their revenue stream, since it'll just be pirated anyway. The same number of people will pay for it, either way. Essentially, DRM is a pointless expense for them.
- polshaw 14y ago
  Well, we already know DRM is a pointless expense, look at all the piracy it is stopping, according to ubisoft no less. But i think this could easily just be seen as users using piracy to try-before-you-buy.. and that most users might not like your game? I strongly doubt 95% of users who play a significant amount of game X are pirates.
slowpoke 14y ago
Too bad that Free2Play will almost always inevitably lead to Pay4Fun. I've see few games where this wasn't the case (the first few years of GuildWars being an example, I don't know about the current state of affairs). More often than not, it doesn't become "cashing in to get a better experience", it's "requiring money to play properly at all". And I don't trust the major publishers with their history of retarded DLC to do any good in that regard.
zobzu 14y ago
I'd like to know which magic hat the 95% comes from as usual. I pay for most PC games and so do my friends. I highly doubt we're in the 5%. Feels like a classic "the subject is not the percentage" in order to make everyone comfortable with "95%". I also highly dislike DLCs. Usually they're required to keep up in online games (else you're at unfair disadvantage), or they're just fixing bugs/adding stuff that should have been there from the beginning. Plus games usually cost $50 .. then need $15 DLCs (3, 4 of them). F2P generally need $50-$100 of stuff overall as well. Make the game $5, I'll buy it and so will everyone. Heck, I buy all phone games for that reason. The price is reasonable, and pirating it is more hassle than just paying. (ofc, if you put horrible DRM restrictions on top, $5 or not, the pirated game is generally easier to get) Note that I'm not requiring games to be $5. I pay for $50 games today. I just reckon that they'll probably get more money if they sell them cheaper.
- bunderbunder 14y ago
  > Make the game $5, I'll buy it and so will everyone. That assumes that most people are pirating just because they think the game's too expensive. - If someone pirates games because their parents don't want to drive them to the store and they don't have a credit card for buying games online, then dropping the price to $5 won't change anything for them. - If someone pirates games because they've gotten so used to doing it that the idea of going to a store never even crosses their mind, then dropping the price to $5 won't change anything for them. - If someone pirates games because they don't want to shell out for a complete unknown, then dropping the price to $5 won't change much for them. That last one is one I'd like to unpack, too. Even assuming Ubi's 95% figure is correct, that presumably comes from just counting individuals. According to that metric, someone who pirates a game because there's no demo and plays it for ten minutes before deleting counts as just as much of a pirate as someone who steals the game and then plays it 4 hours a day for months. And someone who pirates it and plays for an hour before deciding to buy it is counted as both a legitimate buyer and a pirate. I'd be much more interested to know what percentage of play hours are logged on pirated vs. legitimate copies of a game. I realize that's not in line with most game makers' pay models, but I suspect it would still turn out to be instructive.
  - 14y ago
46Bit 14y ago
It depends on what you consider a player, in my opinion. I admit that 95% of the users who open a PC game may not be playing a copy they purchased, but in all likelihood most play it for about 5 minutes. Just as with pirated iPhone apps, where it often seems people install 400 apps and never open them twice.
Tomis02 14y ago
If that figure is true for Ubisoft games, they fully deserve it. In other news, Steam and GOG are doing just fine.
bsphil 14y ago
Aside from the number being pulled from their asses, Ubisoft is continuously one of the worst publishers in terms of utilizing harsh DRM. I wouldn't be shocked that people go out of their way to pirate Ubisoft games. I know I haven't bought anything Ubisoft in a long time.
- debacle 14y ago
  I'm in the same boat. They make some really, really good games. If they had a bit better track record on DRM I would have purchased at least six games from them recently, looking at wikipedia.
citricsquid 14y ago
I cannot understand the responses from people here and on reddit stating that the figure is totally made up and it can't be that much. reddit specifically is filled with people who are proud of how they pirate all ubisoft games because of the "terrible DRM". Indie games that have no DRM and great prices[1] have reported very high piracy rates, published games that have no DRM and very high ratings also have bad piracy rates[2]. Most people seem to suggest that piracy is a result of having a crappy product and the only way to stop piracy is to improve their product, so surely making their product free (therefore removing any need to pirate) solves exactly this? Why aren't people applauding Ubisoft for adapting their business and products to their audience (people that want to play games but don't want to pay -- and those that do want to pay, can)? It seems most people on the internet want to think that A] Piracy is not a problem B] DRM causes piracy C] If you have no DRM then your game will sell well D] Free to play is a terrible dis-service to gamers I don't understand what gamers want from companies like Ubisoft? [1] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of... [2] http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-on-witcher-2-piracy-why-drms-still-not-worth-it/ http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-...
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  > I don't understand what gamers want from companies like Ubisoft? It's just like music: 1. AAA titles without paying a cent 2. Innovation, but not too much (being a newbie is a cardinal sin, remember?) 3. No DLC, just free content released periodically afterwards Piracy does quite a number on people with existing entitlement issues.
  - elarkin 14y ago
    This isn't entirely an issue of greedy people having feelings of entitlement. Like many of you all, I do not know of anyone who pirates software, movies or music (ever since I graduated college) anymore. That's because the piracy rates in the US are much reduced compared to elsewhere in the world. International publishers, like Ubisoft, then feel that if they are going to sell their products in these high-piracy areas that they need to protect it. Then, because they have to protect it from the pirates elsewhere, they give us a crippled product in the US. If Ubisoft thought of its customers strictly as Americans, they would not have implemented all the crazy DRM stuff they have today. Regardless of whether you believe Ubisoft is justified in pursuing DRM at all costs like they have, the issue is /not/ primarily one of entitlement. http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2011/ http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2011/
macspoofing 14y ago
What I'm curious about is whether or not DRM actually reduces their piracy levels.
1SaltwaterC 14y ago
I find it hard to feel sorry for Ubisoft, really. I still enjoy playing SCCT from time to time. Due to the retarded Starforce that won't receive an update for Windows versions above XP / 2003 Server, I find myself in the odd position of using a "no-DVD" patch for a game that I own.
- c0n5pir4cy 14y ago
  I actually use No-CD/No-DVD patches for all my Ubisoft games (Assassins Creed and Anno), so it isn't that unusual a position.
typicalrunt 14y ago
Not all piracy ends up to be a lost sale. There are some people out there that pirate, with no intention of purchase. I'm not surprised that Ubi is also finding that F2P users aren't paying either, some people just don't see the value or don't want to spend their money. Let's take this problem out of the gaming/IT industry altogether. The last time you went to Costco (for non-Americans, it's large warehouse grocery chain), did you see the throngs of people waiting to take whatever free sample was being cooked up? And how many of those people ever actually pay for the real product? Maybe Costco has the conversion rates, but I bet they're wildly unreliable. IMHO, what I tend to see are a bunch of freeloaders who will take anything that is free and then leave when the offer is made to purchase the product. Free-to-play, free-to-sample, it's all the same thing.
- irishcoffee 14y ago
  Yep, the F2P statistic is absurd. How many people have downloaded LoL, played for 15 seconds and uninstalled. I realize Ubisoft didn't make LoL, but the point is the same. Its a useless metric.
- bsphil 14y ago
  I like the Costco free sample comparison, haven't thought of it that way before.
pdovy 14y ago
Taking them at their word on their statistics (seems reasonable as citricsquid pointed out based on interviews with the World of Goo developers and CD Projekt), I wonder how that would look broken down by country. That is to say, is piracy really that rampant in the US, or are these numbers inflated by distribution in countries where games/movies are pirated and sold in hard copy form on the street or in shops? Which is worse for piracy, the ability to anonymously download the game via bittorrent, or being able to feel psuedo-legitimate about paying real money to a real person on the street or in a shop for a burned copy?
Bro_Merch 14y ago
Half on subject. Just a note about fair pricing: I downloaded my first pirated copy of anything ever the other day and this is why. My son is playing LEGO star wars. He asks me how to advance and I tell him I don't know. He asks, "haven't you seen the movie?" I say yes, would you like to? Of course he says yes. I set out to find a Star Wars (a new hope). Can you buy from iTunes? No. Netflix have it? No. And so on. The only option was Amazon who only had it as a super deluxe diamond ultra edition box set for more more digits worth of money than I was willing to spend on a movie that I saw in theater for less than $5. Things need to be reasonably priced for reasonable people to pay for them. According to apple I (or my wife) have purchased 261 mobile apps. Most for real money. I think the best business model I've encountered from a revenue point of view was a chess game that came in two varieties. There wasn't free to pay or pay to play (reg & lite), there was $1.99 and $6.99 (reg & pro), the second just being much more featured. I bought both. No upgrade option. Bought both outright, because $2 is a reasonable gamble and $7 more is reasonable for a game I know I like. I wonder how the developer is doing.
- franzus 14y ago
  > Things need to be reasonably priced for reasonable people to pay for them. A high price does not entitle you to get a free copy. If you don't want to/can't pay for something then don't buy it. That's why I have no porsche in my garage.
benologist 14y ago
So many amazing insights from HN: - the 95% aren't players - the 95% aren't customers - people must be buying the boxed game then installing a pirated version - the number must be a lie because it makes piracy look bad - ubisoft deserves it HN2012 = Digg2007
Cushman 14y ago
Ubisoft is not a great advocate for the industry, in my opinion. I buy their games occasionally, since they own some of my favorite franchises. I also occasionally pirate them first to see if they are unplayable console ports, or have game-breakingly bad bugs or performance-- which they consistently do. I know I probably don't represent the average pirate, just throwing that out there.
- MrMember 14y ago
  It really saddens me to see what Ubisoft has done to some of my favorite franchises. I loved Anno 1404, played it tons. Haven't bought (or played) Anno 2070 because of the awful DRM. I loved the Silent Hunter series. Played 3 and 4 for countless hours. I didn't buy (or play) 5 because of the DRM. IL-2 Sturmovik is one of the greatest flight sims of all time. Cliffs of Dover is an abomination. Meanwhile, after Lock On: Modern Air Combat, the developer split from Ubisoft and went on to make two of the greatest flight sims of the past decade in the DCS series (and they're still going strong). Not even Ubi's $1 sale could get me to install their client and buy theirs games.
njharman 14y ago
> Nevertheless, the latter [free to play] model can be a great opportunity to beat piracy. Ah "free to play" doesn't beat piracy. It makes piracy "legal". If anything it's a capitulation that distribution can't be controlled and that you can't force people to pay who do not want to. An acknowledgement that a new business model is needed cause crippling software with DRM and lobbying congress for more draconian laws isn't as profitable as they lawyers promised.
Splines 14y ago
It would also help if Ubisoft ended their relationship with Digital River. Digital River for some inexplicable reason enforces a limit on the number of times you can download a title. For a digital download service I have a hard time understanding the rational behind that decision.
laserDinosaur 14y ago
95%...for Ubisoft. I read this as: Sales are down 95% and our investors want a reason. Could it be the always-online draconian DRM you force on everyone? Could that be the reason for the drop in sales?
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I hope this insight: "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." Really does become apparent to folks who make these decisions.
voidr 14y ago
It's funny because Ubisoft has made one of the most horrible online experience I have ever heard of in Heroes 6, basically you log in, your "offline" saves become inaccessible and sometimes they just vanish forever. They clearly don't get it. They should watch and learn from Blizzard, Riot Games and the others. If you provide value in online play people will pay for the game solely for the online experience, see World Of Warcraft. I wonder how many people pirate Star Craft 2, Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft.

26 points by anons2011 14y ago

debacle 14y ago

Ergo, 95% of your users are not your customers.

ZoFreX 14y ago
And yet the 95% enjoy a far higher quality product than the 5% that actually pay, when it comes to Ubisoft games.
astrodust 14y ago
It could be that a lot of customers buy the boxed product, then install the warez version because it doesn't have any DRM associated with it. This doesn't clarify how they know the games are pirated. Ubisoft is one of the worst offenders lately when it comes to treating their customers like criminals. Even products bought through Steam have all kinds of added on DRM and CD-Key nonsense.
- AnIrishDuck 14y ago
  I refuse to buy Ubisoft products because of the DRM. I'm not going to pirate them, but I sure as hell won't do business with a company that constantly treats me like a criminal. I've already passed on several games because of this. Some game publishers believe that you can turn 1 out of 1000 pirates into paying customers [1]; it stuns me that Ubisoft ignores how invasive DRM can turn away a significant fraction of potential customers. 1. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350 http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350
- debacle 14y ago
  I was speaking specifically of the F2P users. Pirates are neither users not customers.

djt 14y ago

I wonder if charging $5 for the game would lead to a massive increase in the % that pay. Steam did a lot of testing around this, hence having F2P (TF2) and $20 games with discounts (L4D etc)

Splines 14y ago
Ubisoft last weekend offered some of their games for $1. I'd bet those games sold like hot-cakes. They also sold most of their catalog for $1 a few years ago (for about a day completely by accident), I wonder what their sales numbers were around that time.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

lucisferre 14y ago

I checked both this article and the articles referenced in it and could not find a single place where they back that number up with any hard research. Willing to bet there wasn't any.

citricsquid 14y ago
Here is an article from a developer that provided information on piracy numbers (and claimed 70 - 90% on a DRM free game): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of... edit: source of the 90% (or revised 82%): http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ (sorry bsphil!)
- bsphil 14y ago
  Which is also a completely unsourced number.
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    It's an estimate with a solid base: http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
    - bsphil 14y ago
      Sorry, wasn't able to find that from the original link. I take back my last comment. I guess it boils down to how many of those pirates you think were ever potential customers. Assuming piracy was theoretically impossible, how many would've purchased it rather than not play at all?
      - irishcoffee 14y ago
        Not many, I'd make a completely un-verifiable estimate of 5% or less.
    - nahname 14y ago

buster 14y ago

I really don't believe that number. Even when i was a poor pupil and student and pirated stuff, never ever was my games collection 95% pirated. And that was when most games weren't bound to having an internet connection or used multiplayer on the internet.

shardling 14y ago
I imagine that the global amount of piracy would be very different than, say, the piracy rate in the U.S.

stephengillie 14y ago

“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,” [Ubisoft CEO Yves] Guillemot said. Their customers convert from free-to-paying and from pirate-to-paying at the same rate. Releasing a game as free-to-play doesn't cut into their revenue stream, since it'll just be pirated anyway. The same number of people will pay for it, either way. Essentially, DRM is a pointless expense for them.

polshaw 14y ago
Well, we already know DRM is a pointless expense, look at all the piracy it is stopping, according to ubisoft no less. But i think this could easily just be seen as users using piracy to try-before-you-buy.. and that most users might not like your game? I strongly doubt 95% of users who play a significant amount of game X are pirates.

slowpoke 14y ago

Too bad that Free2Play will almost always inevitably lead to Pay4Fun. I've see few games where this wasn't the case (the first few years of GuildWars being an example, I don't know about the current state of affairs). More often than not, it doesn't become "cashing in to get a better experience", it's "requiring money to play properly at all". And I don't trust the major publishers with their history of retarded DLC to do any good in that regard.

zobzu 14y ago

I'd like to know which magic hat the 95% comes from as usual. I pay for most PC games and so do my friends. I highly doubt we're in the 5%. Feels like a classic "the subject is not the percentage" in order to make everyone comfortable with "95%". I also highly dislike DLCs. Usually they're required to keep up in online games (else you're at unfair disadvantage), or they're just fixing bugs/adding stuff that should have been there from the beginning. Plus games usually cost $50 .. then need $15 DLCs (3, 4 of them). F2P generally need $50-$100 of stuff overall as well. Make the game $5, I'll buy it and so will everyone. Heck, I buy all phone games for that reason. The price is reasonable, and pirating it is more hassle than just paying. (ofc, if you put horrible DRM restrictions on top, $5 or not, the pirated game is generally easier to get) Note that I'm not requiring games to be $5. I pay for $50 games today. I just reckon that they'll probably get more money if they sell them cheaper.

bunderbunder 14y ago
> Make the game $5, I'll buy it and so will everyone. That assumes that most people are pirating just because they think the game's too expensive. - If someone pirates games because their parents don't want to drive them to the store and they don't have a credit card for buying games online, then dropping the price to $5 won't change anything for them. - If someone pirates games because they've gotten so used to doing it that the idea of going to a store never even crosses their mind, then dropping the price to $5 won't change anything for them. - If someone pirates games because they don't want to shell out for a complete unknown, then dropping the price to $5 won't change much for them. That last one is one I'd like to unpack, too. Even assuming Ubi's 95% figure is correct, that presumably comes from just counting individuals. According to that metric, someone who pirates a game because there's no demo and plays it for ten minutes before deleting counts as just as much of a pirate as someone who steals the game and then plays it 4 hours a day for months. And someone who pirates it and plays for an hour before deciding to buy it is counted as both a legitimate buyer and a pirate. I'd be much more interested to know what percentage of play hours are logged on pirated vs. legitimate copies of a game. I realize that's not in line with most game makers' pay models, but I suspect it would still turn out to be instructive.
- 14y ago

46Bit 14y ago

It depends on what you consider a player, in my opinion. I admit that 95% of the users who open a PC game may not be playing a copy they purchased, but in all likelihood most play it for about 5 minutes. Just as with pirated iPhone apps, where it often seems people install 400 apps and never open them twice.

Tomis02 14y ago

If that figure is true for Ubisoft games, they fully deserve it. In other news, Steam and GOG are doing just fine.

bsphil 14y ago

Aside from the number being pulled from their asses, Ubisoft is continuously one of the worst publishers in terms of utilizing harsh DRM. I wouldn't be shocked that people go out of their way to pirate Ubisoft games. I know I haven't bought anything Ubisoft in a long time.

debacle 14y ago
I'm in the same boat. They make some really, really good games. If they had a bit better track record on DRM I would have purchased at least six games from them recently, looking at wikipedia.

citricsquid 14y ago

I cannot understand the responses from people here and on reddit stating that the figure is totally made up and it can't be that much. reddit specifically is filled with people who are proud of how they pirate all ubisoft games because of the "terrible DRM". Indie games that have no DRM and great prices[1] have reported very high piracy rates, published games that have no DRM and very high ratings also have bad piracy rates[2]. Most people seem to suggest that piracy is a result of having a crappy product and the only way to stop piracy is to improve their product, so surely making their product free (therefore removing any need to pirate) solves exactly this? Why aren't people applauding Ubisoft for adapting their business and products to their audience (people that want to play games but don't want to pay -- and those that do want to pay, can)? It seems most people on the internet want to think that A] Piracy is not a problem B] DRM causes piracy C] If you have no DRM then your game will sell well D] Free to play is a terrible dis-service to gamers I don't understand what gamers want from companies like Ubisoft? [1] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of... [2] http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-on-witcher-2-piracy-why-drms-still-not-worth-it/ http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-...

mattgreenrocks 14y ago
> I don't understand what gamers want from companies like Ubisoft? It's just like music: 1. AAA titles without paying a cent 2. Innovation, but not too much (being a newbie is a cardinal sin, remember?) 3. No DLC, just free content released periodically afterwards Piracy does quite a number on people with existing entitlement issues.
- elarkin 14y ago
  This isn't entirely an issue of greedy people having feelings of entitlement. Like many of you all, I do not know of anyone who pirates software, movies or music (ever since I graduated college) anymore. That's because the piracy rates in the US are much reduced compared to elsewhere in the world. International publishers, like Ubisoft, then feel that if they are going to sell their products in these high-piracy areas that they need to protect it. Then, because they have to protect it from the pirates elsewhere, they give us a crippled product in the US. If Ubisoft thought of its customers strictly as Americans, they would not have implemented all the crazy DRM stuff they have today. Regardless of whether you believe Ubisoft is justified in pursuing DRM at all costs like they have, the issue is /not/ primarily one of entitlement. http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2011/ http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2011/

macspoofing 14y ago

What I'm curious about is whether or not DRM actually reduces their piracy levels.

1SaltwaterC 14y ago

I find it hard to feel sorry for Ubisoft, really. I still enjoy playing SCCT from time to time. Due to the retarded Starforce that won't receive an update for Windows versions above XP / 2003 Server, I find myself in the odd position of using a "no-DVD" patch for a game that I own.

c0n5pir4cy 14y ago
I actually use No-CD/No-DVD patches for all my Ubisoft games (Assassins Creed and Anno), so it isn't that unusual a position.

typicalrunt 14y ago

Not all piracy ends up to be a lost sale. There are some people out there that pirate, with no intention of purchase. I'm not surprised that Ubi is also finding that F2P users aren't paying either, some people just don't see the value or don't want to spend their money. Let's take this problem out of the gaming/IT industry altogether. The last time you went to Costco (for non-Americans, it's large warehouse grocery chain), did you see the throngs of people waiting to take whatever free sample was being cooked up? And how many of those people ever actually pay for the real product? Maybe Costco has the conversion rates, but I bet they're wildly unreliable. IMHO, what I tend to see are a bunch of freeloaders who will take anything that is free and then leave when the offer is made to purchase the product. Free-to-play, free-to-sample, it's all the same thing.

irishcoffee 14y ago
Yep, the F2P statistic is absurd. How many people have downloaded LoL, played for 15 seconds and uninstalled. I realize Ubisoft didn't make LoL, but the point is the same. Its a useless metric.
bsphil 14y ago
I like the Costco free sample comparison, haven't thought of it that way before.

pdovy 14y ago

Taking them at their word on their statistics (seems reasonable as citricsquid pointed out based on interviews with the World of Goo developers and CD Projekt), I wonder how that would look broken down by country. That is to say, is piracy really that rampant in the US, or are these numbers inflated by distribution in countries where games/movies are pirated and sold in hard copy form on the street or in shops? Which is worse for piracy, the ability to anonymously download the game via bittorrent, or being able to feel psuedo-legitimate about paying real money to a real person on the street or in a shop for a burned copy?

Bro_Merch 14y ago

Half on subject. Just a note about fair pricing: I downloaded my first pirated copy of anything ever the other day and this is why. My son is playing LEGO star wars. He asks me how to advance and I tell him I don't know. He asks, "haven't you seen the movie?" I say yes, would you like to? Of course he says yes. I set out to find a Star Wars (a new hope). Can you buy from iTunes? No. Netflix have it? No. And so on. The only option was Amazon who only had it as a super deluxe diamond ultra edition box set for more more digits worth of money than I was willing to spend on a movie that I saw in theater for less than $5. Things need to be reasonably priced for reasonable people to pay for them. According to apple I (or my wife) have purchased 261 mobile apps. Most for real money. I think the best business model I've encountered from a revenue point of view was a chess game that came in two varieties. There wasn't free to pay or pay to play (reg & lite), there was $1.99 and $6.99 (reg & pro), the second just being much more featured. I bought both. No upgrade option. Bought both outright, because $2 is a reasonable gamble and $7 more is reasonable for a game I know I like. I wonder how the developer is doing.

franzus 14y ago
> Things need to be reasonably priced for reasonable people to pay for them. A high price does not entitle you to get a free copy. If you don't want to/can't pay for something then don't buy it. That's why I have no porsche in my garage.

benologist 14y ago

So many amazing insights from HN: - the 95% aren't players - the 95% aren't customers - people must be buying the boxed game then installing a pirated version - the number must be a lie because it makes piracy look bad - ubisoft deserves it HN2012 = Digg2007

Cushman 14y ago

Ubisoft is not a great advocate for the industry, in my opinion. I buy their games occasionally, since they own some of my favorite franchises. I also occasionally pirate them first to see if they are unplayable console ports, or have game-breakingly bad bugs or performance-- which they consistently do. I know I probably don't represent the average pirate, just throwing that out there.

MrMember 14y ago
It really saddens me to see what Ubisoft has done to some of my favorite franchises. I loved Anno 1404, played it tons. Haven't bought (or played) Anno 2070 because of the awful DRM. I loved the Silent Hunter series. Played 3 and 4 for countless hours. I didn't buy (or play) 5 because of the DRM. IL-2 Sturmovik is one of the greatest flight sims of all time. Cliffs of Dover is an abomination. Meanwhile, after Lock On: Modern Air Combat, the developer split from Ubisoft and went on to make two of the greatest flight sims of the past decade in the DCS series (and they're still going strong). Not even Ubi's $1 sale could get me to install their client and buy theirs games.

njharman 14y ago

> Nevertheless, the latter [free to play] model can be a great opportunity to beat piracy. Ah "free to play" doesn't beat piracy. It makes piracy "legal". If anything it's a capitulation that distribution can't be controlled and that you can't force people to pay who do not want to. An acknowledgement that a new business model is needed cause crippling software with DRM and lobbying congress for more draconian laws isn't as profitable as they lawyers promised.

Splines 14y ago

It would also help if Ubisoft ended their relationship with Digital River. Digital River for some inexplicable reason enforces a limit on the number of times you can download a title. For a digital download service I have a hard time understanding the rational behind that decision.

laserDinosaur 14y ago

95%...for Ubisoft. I read this as: Sales are down 95% and our investors want a reason. Could it be the always-online draconian DRM you force on everyone? Could that be the reason for the drop in sales?

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I hope this insight: "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." Really does become apparent to folks who make these decisions.

voidr 14y ago

It's funny because Ubisoft has made one of the most horrible online experience I have ever heard of in Heroes 6, basically you log in, your "offline" saves become inaccessible and sometimes they just vanish forever. They clearly don't get it. They should watch and learn from Blizzard, Riot Games and the others. If you provide value in online play people will pay for the game solely for the online experience, see World Of Warcraft. I wonder how many people pirate Star Craft 2, Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft.