Ubisoft says PC games piracy rate is about 95 per cent

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, in an interview with GamesIndustry International at Gamescom Cologne, discussed the merits of free-to-play (F2P) games. Mr Guillemot claimed in the interview that Ubisoft would be refocusing on F2P titles for the PC due to the very high level of piracy of PC titles. He claimed that only five to seven per cent of people pay for their PC games with the rest resorting to piracy.

At Gamescom, Ubisoft has announced an initial raft of browser based F2P titles including versions of Might and Magic, The Anno and Silent Hunter. Mr Guillemot claims that while a similar number of people pay for extras in F2P titles as buy legitimate copies of PC game software titles (5 to 7 per cent) buyers of the extras in F2P games continue to add funds into Ubisoft’s coffers for much longer. I have bulletised the other benefits of the F2P games model for Ubisoft, according to Mr Guillemot;

F2P makes money in territories where the company never made money before
F2P rewards the gamers who pay and also sends funds directly to the software company
F2P games are cheaper to produce and distribute
Older IPs can be cannibalised to make viable new F2P titles

The Ubisoft CEO says F2P isn’t the answer to all the problems in the gaming industry. Mr Guillemot looks forward to the next generation of consoles which will bring a massive boost to traditional games sales “We're waiting for the new consoles - I think that the new consoles will give a huge boost to the industry, just like they do every time that they come. This time, they took too long so the market is waiting” he said.

Ubisoft has been trying to clamp down on piracy using DRM for some time and is infamous for implementing user unfriendly DRM techniques in PC games. Now we know the piracy figures the company has to deal with it is easier to understand the motives behind these implementations, even though DRM always seems to punish the honest paying customer with inconvenience. F2P games are often criticised in the way purchases unbalance gameplay and that the titles are much shallower. Will this trend mean that in the not-too-distant future console gamers will get deeper, fuller and more immersive games to play than their PC brethren?

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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.

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.

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!

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?”

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.

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.

Ubisoft says PC games piracy rate is about 95 per cent

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