News - Ubisoft says PC games piracy rate is about 95 per cent

[HEXUS]

Therefore company will move more towards the free-to-play PC games market.

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[alpha channel]

I'd imagine that such a high rate of piracy is down to the DRM (if it really is that high), I can see users getting so frustrated with idiotic DRM restrictions that they end off pirating it so they can play the game they bought without having to jump through hoops to do so.

[shaithis]

No more UBI games for me then.

Perhaps they should have got rid of their ridiculous DRM....then people wouldn't have found the need to pirate their software so that it worked reliably.....and once you've had to do that a couple of times I can understand people starting to think "Why bother buying the next game?"

Having now tried a couple of F2P games, I absolutely hate them. They are essentially Pay2Win. I.e. You cannot really compete without spending money and they keep finding ways to make you feel like you need to spend more.....and the thing that makes me realise that they are making more money from this system is that they never really add an option to buy the game like any other.....its a few quid here, a few quid there.....trying to get loads of money out of you in relatively small amounts.......that adds up to a lot more then you would have paid for a full priced title.

[funke_munke]

His claims about piracy are so wide of the mark it's not even funny. Some people play with the figures he's laid out in a mathmatical fashion on the PCGamer comments about the same statements. It's quite funny.

Also Shaithis... Tribes? You can unlock every weapon freely, and apart from one or two items I felt I personally needed for a class, most of the 'upgrades' are more sidewards... The only benefit is if they fit your playstyle. There are items that you can only unlock with cash, but they are all purely cosmetic. I spent about £15 on the game, which is waayyy less than a full priced game and have played it so much more than most others in the last year. I think it's a perfectly valid method of business, and although the market is flooded with rubbish, I can't say I'm not excited for games of quality such as Planetside 2!

[dangel]

No more UBI games for me then.

Perhaps they should have got rid of their ridiculous DRM....then people wouldn't have found the need to pirate their software so that it worked reliably.....and once you've had to do that a couple of times I can understand people starting to think "Why bother buying the next game?"

Which DRM are you thinking of? More recently they've dropped the always on stuff from the games I bought (AC series) which made it pretty OK-ish. Not that i'm defending them I hate invasive DRM as much as the next man..

Also, this guy is full of crap.

[GaryRW]

And yet again, there is no justification or explanation of any kind as to how they have reached their figures of 90%+ piracy rates.

And of course no recognition of the hassle they put their paying customers through, no acknowledgement of the problems they've had with DRM with servers failing etc... and most obviously, no flicker of a light bulb coming on that suggests despite all of that, they still have 90%+ piracy rates.

How can anyone look at continued (alleged) 90%+ piracy rates and come to any conclusion other than they have simply annoyed their paying customers with their DRM strategy?

I wonder how many of the pirates are paying in F2P? I'd assume very few, but that would be as bad as pulling random numbers out of the air for piracy rates with no explanation.

[Ross1]

ubisoft just make me really annoyed that i have bought some of their games. I especially wish I hadnt of purchased from dust.

anyway, surely their superior ultra drm always have to be online system prevents all this piracy they talk about.

[sam3]

The 95% piracy seems ridiculous - I would like to know how they came up with this figure. If this is true then the PC platform would be their biggest platform selling around 6-7 times more copies than consoles?

[dangel]

F2P makes me shudder. I'm not interesting in online gaming in general (although odd co-op stuff appeals like Borderlands or SC:FA) and i'd just want to *buy the whole thing in one hit*.

I'm already arsed off about Ubisofts stupid number of special editions of AC 3 which I will buy because i'm a massive fan of the series (yes I hate myself but I love gaming).

[kingpotnoodle]

DRM is used because of piracy - if the scum didn't pirate then DRM wouldn't be necessary.

Pirating because of DRM is ultimately a self-defeating strategy because you encourage the DRM imposing publisher even more.

Bottom line is if scummy sh1tbags could just pay for what they enjoy the world would be a better place. Don't blame the publishers, blame the pirates, it's a mess of their causation.

[whitetop]

yeah i got settlers and hate having to only use it while i got a internet connection that DRM does my head in. but since 1993 i got on the internet i've only downloaded 3 games and that was just a test to see if i liked the games and deleted them after.

the 95% is a bit on the high side they much be talking and taking results from places people downloading from as i don't think its that high could just be them saying it so they got f2p.

[dangel]

DRM is used because of piracy - if the scum didn't pirate then DRM wouldn't be necessary.

Pirating because of DRM is ultimately a self-defeating strategy because you encourage the DRM imposing publisher even more.

Bottom line is if scummy sh1tbags could just pay for what they enjoy the world would be a better place. Don't blame the publishers, blame the pirates, it's a mess of their causation.

So why does the Witcher 2 have no DRM? And why did it still sell (bucketloads)? Why does Steam have relatively benign DRM given it's the largest single digital platform for game sales?

DRM is a necessity at the base level of stopping casual copying - anything that causes your customers more pain than people who are bootlegging it (and probably wouldn't but it anyway) is plain stupid. It harms the paying punter and your reputation. End of.

Piracy will always exist, people who are pirates aren't your customers. Accept reality and behave accordingly. I'd argue that Valve managed that - and also managed to add value to their platform by giving their customers features like workshop, autopatching, steamworks, multiplayer etc etc

[crossy]

Which DRM are you thinking of? More recently they've dropped the always on stuff from the games I bought (AC series) which made it pretty OK-ish. Not that i'm defending them I hate invasive DRM as much as the next man..

I've got the AC games on my PC too and - apart from the requirement to register for uPlay - I've not had any problems with them. On the other hand I've had awful problems trying to buy anything from Ubisoft's site, and Ubi's "support" line's attitude seemed to be "eff off, we've got better things to do than talk to you".

Also, this guy is full of crap.

Agreed - I just fail to believe that I'm the only one buying the games and there's another 19 folks ripping 'em off. Put it this way, GAME, HMV etc seem to have a lot of boxed editions on the shelves, which they wouldn't do if they weren't selling. Plus "Yves Guillemot"? Sounds like a character from a Monty Python sketch!

One question though - if these "new" F2P titles (quotes around new because the article makes it plain that Ubi's going to dig up old titles and "reimagine" them) are browser based, then doesn't that mean that anything with a decent browser can use them - so not only the usual Windows install, and Macs - but perhaps Linux support too?

That said, I don't like the idea of a "free" to play that then turns out to needs substantial, and ongoing, investment.

[SciFi]

DRM is used because of piracy - if the scum didn't pirate then DRM wouldn't be necessary.

Pirating because of DRM is ultimately a self-defeating strategy because you encourage the DRM imposing publisher even more.

Bottom line is if scummy sh1tbags could just pay for what they enjoy the world would be a better place. Don't blame the publishers, blame the pirates, it's a mess of their causation.

Sorry but this is balls, the groups that remove the DRM from these games main goal is to prove that they can remove it. If you read the release notes for any major 'release' group you will always see something along the lines of "If you enjoy this game, buy it. Support developers"

The DRM wave was because the $$ hounds at publishing houses THINK they are loosing loads of cash. You just need to look at things like world of goo to know that people will pay for what they like!

The real issue here is that the buying public has been crewed over with half developed games for so long that anyone with half a brain downloads a game first to make sure it's not a pile of ****e before splashing out £40 on a new game.

Now, if we could have a return to the good old days where the first few levels of a game were released as a 'DEMO' or 'Shareware' as it was called and you pay for the full game....

That would drop pirate rates by tonnes!

[kalniel]

You just need to look at things like world of goo to know that people will pay for what they like!

That's why that was pirated at such a high rate despite only costing 1p or whatever?

Now, if we could have a return to the good old days where the first few levels of a game were released as a 'DEMO' or 'Shareware' as it was called and you pay for the full game....

That would drop pirate rates by tonnes!

Sadly demos don't seem to have any effect, and as often as not they end up turning people off buying the game.

[dangel]

I've got the AC games on my PC too and - apart from the requirement to register for uPlay - I've not had any problems with them. On the other hand I've had awful problems trying to buy anything from Ubisoft's site, and Ubi's "support" line's attitude seemed to be "eff off, we've got better things to do than talk to you".

That I can believe - I did once contact their support and they weren't very helpful