
Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay - anons2011
http://torrentfreak.com/ubisoft-pc-piracy-levels-95-and-95-of-free-to-play-users-do-not-pay-120822/
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citricsquid
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...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-
piracy-rate-near-90/)

[2] [http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-
ceo-...](http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-on-
witcher-2-piracy-why-drms-still-not-worth-it/)

~~~
mattgreenrocks
> 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
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/>

------
zobzu
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
> 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.

~~~
hamai
How about this idea that every potential costumer is either a pirate or a
buyer. I think people hold their wallets when they see the price of games. I
know I'm holding on Guild Wars 2, and I was one of the early hypers, dreaming
with this game. Some years later I just don't think it's worthy, though I did
throw more than that at F2P games.

------
typicalrunt
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
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.

------
lucisferre
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
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...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-
piracy-rate-near-90/)

edit: source of the 90% (or revised 82%): <http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/>
(sorry bsphil!)

~~~
bsphil
Which is also a completely unsourced number.

~~~
citricsquid
It's an estimate with a solid base: <http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/>

~~~
bsphil
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
Not many, I'd make a completely un-verifiable estimate of 5% or less.

------
46Bit
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.

------
stephengillie
_“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
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.

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

~~~
astrodust
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
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>

------
Bro_Merch
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.

------
bsphil
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
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.

------
buster
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
I imagine that the global amount of piracy would be very different than, say,
the piracy rate in the U.S.

------
pdovy
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?

------
Cushman
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
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.

------
1SaltwaterC
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
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.

------
benologist
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

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

------
voidr
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.

------
njharman
> 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.

------
slowpoke
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.

------
ChuckMcM
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.

------
Splines
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
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?

------
djt
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
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.

------
Tomis02
If that figure is true for Ubisoft games, they fully deserve it.

In other news, Steam and GOG are doing just fine.

