Gameguru Mania

ggrobot · Elite Member Joined: 28 May 2004 Posts: 45827

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 Ma

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Source: GGMania headlines
GGMania.com - Daily Gaming and Tech news

tiamat · Contributing Member Joined: 21 Sep 2010 Posts: 58

Bert · Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2012 10:02 pm Post subject:

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 · Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2012 12:43 am Post subject:

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 · Junior Member Joined: 26 Jun 2010 Posts: 180

heretic · Site Admin Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 2747

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=- · Junior Member Joined: 22 Feb 2011 Posts: 212

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 · Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2012 3:01 am Post subject:

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 · Elite Member Joined: 27 Feb 2010 Posts: 566

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 Exclamation

Kompressor · Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2012 5:13 pm Post subject:

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 · Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:13 am Post subject:

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 · Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:52 pm Post subject:

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 · Contributor Joined: 24 Aug 2012 Posts: 4

Dear ubisoft CEO, even those 5-7% are too much for the crap you publish.

Genoism · Elite Member Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 335

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 · Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2012 6:53 am Post subject:

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.