Only 5-7% of PC Gamers pay for their titles?

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Gameguru Mania News - Aug,25 2012 -

Only 5-7% of PC Gamers pay for their titles? - briefly
(hx) 12:06 PM CEST - Aug,25 2012 - Post a comment / read (20)
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told Games Industry international that: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has told GamesIndustry International that the percentage of paying players is the same for free to play as it is for PC boxed product: around five to seven per cent.

Speaking to GamesIndustry International editor Matt Martin at Gamescom, Guillemot revealed that free to play has been an effective way for Ubisoft to market product to territories in which PC gaming had been so badly affected by piracy that profit was impossible.

"We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it," said the French CEO. "The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn't previously - places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer. "It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue.

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. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content."

last 10 comments:

tiamat

(05:56 PM CEST - Aug,25 2012 )

quote:
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.

Yup, the PC platform is filled with dirty pirates and console owners are all good little gamers who just throw money at us. The seeder/leecher numbers in the Xbox and PSx sections of the torrent sites you see are all just filthy lies. No piracy there *lalala* I can't hear you.

Of course the horribly draconian DRM Ubi added didn't affect your sales in any way. Remind me Yves, which Assassin's Creed game had hundreds of one start reviews and wasn't selling for just over £10 on amazon in the very week it launched?

Bert

(10:02 PM CEST - Aug,25 2012 )

I wonder where Yves Guillemot gets his data "five to seven percent...". I smell BS. The key point F2P probably does get Ubisoft and others into markets they wouldn't otherwise, however its not new hardware that Ubisoft needs, its reliable interesting content players want. If less than ten per cent
pay for Ubisoft products, then it sounds like a Ubisoft problem.

Given the massive initial game downloads, the DLC, the frequent updating,
the proprietary on-line authentification (steam, origin, gob, other), PC
pirating isn't like it used to be. Not saying pirating isn't happening. Just thinking a game like BF3; I haven't heard of anyone who pirated the game, got it hacked, downloading all the BS, and is still playing the same pirated game now.

Sabot

(12:43 AM CEST - Aug,26 2012 )

There's more hackers on PC than any number of consoles, and always has been.
Why I have it in my signature.
Away back 21 years ago, everyone I knew had pkzipped Doom 1,2. And any DOS based game they could borrow. Even I was guilty of borrowing zipped titles. I would still buy them though. Unfortunately today's gamer is a different beast, as they've grown up stealing music as well. We never had digital internet pirated copies of anything. Not on 28kb connection! We grew up taping vinyl records from friends and again buying the full product. I would say the average teen has probably about 5% bought music downloads and the rest pirated. About 98% of my music is physically owned and the rest is a couple of select downloaded bought tracks.
PC hackers and pirates go hand in hand.
I can rent/borrow every console game out there, unlike PC games which are unrentable, unborrowable and therefore only pirateable. Demos shareware were the only thing that saved mass piracy, but today there is so much shit games on PC released they don't do demos and just try and force sales= fail. It's its own worst enemy.

zarlin

(01:08 AM CEST - Aug,26 2012 )

Stumpus> There's more hackers on PC than any number of consoles, and always has been.
Why I have it in my signature.
Away back 21 years ago, everyone I knew had pkzipped Doom 1,2. And any DOS based game they could borrow. Even I was guilty of borrowing zipped titles. I would still buy them though. Unfortunately today's gamer is a different beast, as they've grown up stealing music as well. We never had digital internet pirated copies of anything. Not on 28kb connection! We grew up taping vinyl records from friends and again buying the full product. I would say the average teen has probably about 5% bought music downloads and the rest pirated. About 98% of my music is physically owned and the rest is a couple of select downloaded bought tracks.
PC hackers and pirates go hand in hand.
I can rent/borrow every console game out there, unlike PC games which are unrentable, unborrowable and therefore only pirateable. Demos shareware were the only thing that saved mass piracy, but today there is so much shit games on PC released they don't do demos and just try and force sales= fail. It's its own worst enemy.

Could be back then the games were worth buying (after trying), games today are not worth it peps today have seen what pos are released and say"hell no" not my 60$

heretic

(01:16 AM CEST - Aug,26 2012 )

Ubisoft is ran by some seriously devious assholes. I can't truly believe this guy thinks that his userbase (those actually playing the game) is nearly 20x the amount of sales. Therefore, I can only conclude it is a calculated statement designed to further support their draconian DRM soft.

And if DRM isn't stopping piracy, then why spend all the money on DRM? Do they think that DRM scares away anybody except legitimate customers?

-=WolverinE=-	(01:30 AM CEST - Aug,26 2012 )
Sure thing, Ubi. I guess all those stats on steam are pirates as well... But then again, these numbers must be true for your games especially when the steam forums were ablaze with people wanting a refund for From Dust.

darknothing	(03:01 AM CEST - Aug,26 2012 )
Thats right drm did nothing to ur sales, hah. Xbox no piracy? Ps3 no piracy? Huge bs on there part, i own 3 systems, and one pc, let me tell you something ubdumb they all play pirated games fine.

tride

(12:40 PM CEST - Aug,26 2012 )

First of all the data he is talking about is incorrect!!!
There is no way to know how many people would buy your product!!! Unless you force them to buy your stuff...

Personally I DON't buy stuff before i try it! The exceptions are few, Trine, Shogun ...... but i knew the previous games!!!

SO, i couldn't care less about those corporations... are they doing poorly ? I don't think so!

The reasons i pirate stuff is:
1: The company doesnt release DEMO
2: DRM and all kinds of shit they put in a game to make my day and experience worse! A company policy for fucking up a customer won't make a sale here!

SO Ubisoft, FUCK YOU :!:

Kompressor	(05:13 PM CEST - Aug,26 2012 )
I bet the piracy is higher on games that have DRM than without. Why pay $60 on a game with a bunch of DRM crap that you have to deal with when you can get the same game without DRM for free? These gaming companies punish people for buying their games, and people that pirate them get rewarded. "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Csimbi	(05:13 AM CEST - Aug,27 2012 )
The board is not happy with your results, so you find someone to blame. It is only natural. On the other hand, if the board believes the crap you're trying to spoon-feed them, I guess you will surely go out of business very very soon.

Apathy Curve	(05:52 PM CEST - Aug,27 2012 )
We can only hope, Csimbi. I've been waiting for Ubi to go tits-up for years. Maybe this bit of asshattery will push them over the cliff.

Manfy	(04:04 AM CEST - Aug,28 2012 )
Dear ubisoft CEO, even those 5-7% are too much for the crap you publish.

Genoism

(04:49 AM CEST - Aug,28 2012 )

you guys are all wrong - it's very easy to tell how many people have pirated your game.

There are companies out there that track downloads of your software on virtually all the popular torrent sites. You won't get an accurate number - for sure - but when you track 2mil downloads via torrents of your game and you make say 50k in profit - you know that you made only 5-7% profit on your game. And you can always buffer those numbers because you know that some people share downloaded games via burned dvds/usbs/network/etc.

I actually did a lot of research on this to see if companies were bs'ing or if it was true. And let me tell you - they pad the numbers in their favor but not by much - they could easily make enough money to develop another 5 games if no one pirated their software and still support & patch up all their older games. Sadly instead most of the profit they could have made either goes into greedy corporate pockets or is lost through torrent sites. So you can image how little trickles down to the average developer/artist.

This is why f2p games do so well.

Bert

(06:53 AM CEST - Aug,28 2012 )

The initial article discusses an effect of pirating, however, I think the issue
has to be broken into "hacking" and "illegally downloading". And then
simplified to the core issue does every illegal download equate, more or
less, to a lost sale. I'd like to see the data on that and not the spin.

In the past, I'd have little to question. Hack a game, put it up to
bittorrent, and wham a lost sale every download if the hack was stable.

Today, using BF3 as an example, you'd have to very objective to tell
me a fella can hack the game, others to download it illegally, deal with
the mega updates, deal with the Origin crap, the DLC packs, and is still
playing the same pirated game three months later without buying the
real version, and then say only 10% of BF3 gamers bought the game.
Not saying it isn't possible, but what a headache.

Hacking is the real issue and illegal downloading is the medium. The
PC remains a viable tool for many things including gaming. If Ubi
wishes to remain a PC content provider, it will have to develop on-line security stradegies within their software like everyone else.

Csimbi	(03:37 AM CEST - Aug,29 2012 )
Ubi tried online security with Settlers and Assassin's Creed. Remember how that worked out? I buy all the games on GOG.com - without all the security crap you yearn for. Anything less than that, I play at the neighbor.

Baconnaise

(09:24 AM CEST - Aug,29 2012 )

I pirate every game that I'm interested in. If the game is any good (to me that is) then it gets purchased. My steam account is loaded down with indie bundles I don't play enough and titles like Anno 2070 (yea an ubi game which requires a launcher and special shit). The crap with Anno 2070 just brings the game down. I own all xpacs including rebellion for SoaSE. The game has no DRM but a serial for multiplayer.

DRM and issues resulting from DRM will hinder sales. I uninstalled dragonica from the kids comps and made them jump on the USA servers instead of EU since the client doesn't use a version of nguard (DRM anti hack). It caused nothing but problems. All the comps have malware bytes plus security essentials and firefox + no script/ad block. If something goes wrong it's usually our fault. The nguard and other software that is drm cause too many problems.

FYI I do usually pirate music to a degree. I own most of what I pirated though via actual vinyl, cassettes (wow still have these), and a huge CD collection via my teen years (300 or so late 80's early 90's I'm old). It saves the trouble of having to rip and convert all my crap if I can queue it up online these days.

Csimbi

(07:16 PM CEST - Aug,29 2012 )

Baconnaise> FYI I do usually pirate music to a degree. I own most of what I pirated though via actual vinyl, cassettes (wow still have these), and a huge CD collection via my teen years (300 or so late 80's early 90's I'm old). It saves the trouble of having to rip and convert all my crap if I can queue it up online these days.
In EU, laws are sane. Once you bought it, it's not piracy to download and use a copy (same with book, music, games, apps, etc) - depending of course on the license agreement. Also, any information found on the internet is not piracy, neither; it's available for free. Piracy is when you use something that does not belong to you or make it available to others.
I.e.
- you download a game from the internet -> not piracy (!)
- you play a game (that you downloaded from the internet) without having purchased the right to do so -> piracy
- you upload a game to the internet (with or without playing it) that is not yours -> piracy
However, according to this, I would be big time pirate, too - playing all those games at the neighbour, so I guess it's not a 100% true.

Baconnaise

(11:27 AM CEST - Aug,30 2012 )

I actually got a dmca notice recently after some of my e-books that I bought were on my web server. These were legit copies that I had in a folder with nothing linking so I could access it on my trip to my folks. Apparently they just scan whatever the hell they want and send auto dmca notices out. It's getting a little out of control imo. It used to be that ISP's would cut you off for port scanning in such a manner. I guess it's ok if a proxy agency does it.

Csimbi	(05:34 PM CEST - Aug,30 2012 )
Sounds like you have a good case for a lawsuit. Should teach them a lesson.

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