77 réponses à ce sujet

[Nameless one7]

Volus Warlord wrote...

Nameless one7 wrote...

Volus Warlord wrote...


There is a 93-95% piracy rate on the PC and 93-95% of those pirates are Ubisoft employees and shareholders. 

I want to put that into my signature.

I'm not stopping you.

Testing sig now.

[PaulSX]

if the piracy rate is indeed that high then f2p could be a viable solution. I remember back to 2002~2003, China's piracy rate was as high as 92% but in the following 10 years the gaming industry in China totally shifted to free to play. in 10 years, the piracy rate dropped 15% and those companies like Tencent, NetEase and PerfectWorld still made tons of money. So you know it works. Right now in ChinaJoy (the biggest video game expo in China), you only can find very few new games that require you to pay to play.

But I do not believe the piracy rate in Europe and NA is near 90% (I think at most 50%). if add China and Russia, the number can be rounded up to 65% at most.

[Gatt9]

greengoron89 wrote...

More bad news for anti-microtransaction folks:

www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/22/ubisoft-pc-has-piracy-rate-of-93-95-f2p-the-future

I understand the need to combat piracy, but I sure as hell don't like this F2P and microtransaction crap they're pushing on people - there are no arguments proponents of this stuff can make that will change my mind.

It's another indicator of the impending crash.  Publishers don't know what Gamers want,  and think they can force Gamers to accept their schemes to increase revenues.  They'll force it onto Consoles as soon as they can,  assuming the Consoles even manage to sell with the next generation,  of which I have my doubts.

Gamers want to play great games.  Publishers are trying to force revenue schemes on Gamers.  What we have here is Divx vs DVD*.  It'll end the same way.  Consumers will find new producers and the Publishers will find themselves losing massive amounts of revenue.

*Divx was a competitor for DVD,  sold mainly by Circuit City.  You bought the player,  bought the Divx disc for $15-$20,  and after you watched it,  it would expire.  If you wanted to watch it again,  you had to pay to unlock the disc again.  It didn't last long,  so probably almost no one hear heard of it.

if the piracy rate is indeed that high then f2p could be a viable solution. I remember back to 2002~2003, China's piracy rate was as high as 92% but in the following 10 years the gaming industry in China totally shifted to free to play. in 10 years, the piracy rate dropped 15% and those companies like Tencent, NetEase and PerfectWorld still made tons of money. So you know it works. Right now in ChinaJoy (the biggest video game expo in China), you only can find very few new games that require you to pay to play.

But I do not believe the piracy rate in Europe and NA is near 90% (I think at most 50%). if add China and Russia, the number can be rounded up to 65% at most.

All they're likely doing is taking the total number of downloads,  and the total number of sales,  and getting a percentage out of it.  They're assuming every download is a lost sale.  Which is fallacy,  because X number of those downloads wouldn't have paid for it,  and Y paid for it,  but downloaded the cracked version so they didn't have to deal with Ubisoft's ridiculous DRM.

I doubt they're even bothering to eliminate the IP addresses from areas that couldn't have bought it if they wanted to,  or from regions known to be heavy piracy areas.  For instance,  if half of those downloads were from China,  why should they count as American downloads?

Ubisoft has just been trying to justify half-baked console ports and ridiculous DRM by attacking PC Gamers.  They really better hope and pray the next generation of Consoles sells,  because if the market shifts back to PC Gaming again,  Ubisoft's done for.  Repeatedly insulting PC Gamers doesn't engender fuzzy feelings or loyalty.

[Costin_Razvan]

Here are the piracy races by country in 2007: 
http://www.nationmas...are-piracy-rate

The average worldwide is 60%. In the US its 20%, in Germany and the UK it's 27%, in France and Spain 43% and in Italy 49%

Modifié par Costin_Razvan, 23 août 2012 - 05:25 .

[AshedMan]

95% piracy rate is a ludicrous assertion.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Costin_Razvan wrote...

Here are the piracy races by country in 2007: 
http://www.nationmas...are-piracy-rate

The average worldwide is 60%. In the US its 20%, in Germany and the UK it's 27%, in France and Spain 43% and in Italy 49%

I assure you that in Middle East, Russia and China it's over 80%!

But they should attend to their first customers from North America and West Europe for raising hindrance strategies or not.

[finalcabbage]

I wonder if anyone has told Ubisoft about the huge success Steam has had in Russia. You know, that area of the world that had a massive pirate market. These clowns don't need free to play, they just need to offer gamers a product they are willing to pay for. A different market with the same principle would be itunes and the fact that people bother to pay for music. Complaining about piracy is friggin lazy when others have proven it's not a big factor in sales for good products.

[Xewaka]

Meanwhile, on Steam sales...

"WE'RE IN THE MONEY!"

Ubisoft: The piracy is not because PC users are terrible criminals. It's because UPlay sucks balls. I own exactly one Ubisoft game that requires it (MIght and Magic Heroes 6) and UPlay is making me wish I had pirated it instead.
Pull your head out of the hole.
EDIT: Ah, also, I like how you calculated piracy rates. "5-7% of F2P gamers perform microtransactions, while the rest keep playing for free. Therefore, everybody who doesn't pay in F2P games are DIRTY PIRATES". No, that's not how it works.

Modifié par Xewaka, 23 août 2012 - 08:47 .

[finalcabbage]

I think I used UPlay once. For some reason it left an impression similar to gamespy arcade or games for windows live. It was like a thing that's there but doesn't even need to exist. Makes me wonder how much money was put into developing a service that has no real purpose or future.

[Fishy]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Suprez30 wrote...

Also before digital gaming,  torrent site was even a better solution for many people. I think the best way to fight piracy is   throthling torrent  or bandwitch cap ( Which is even a worse idea because of the icnrease need of unlimited bandwitch).

I am glad that my ISP doesn't believe in those solutions.

I`m just a bitter man for having a cap .. So I want the same for everyone.

Modifié par Suprez30, 23 août 2012 - 09:21 .

[Cyberarmy]

Xewaka wrote...

Meanwhile, on Steam sales...

"WE'RE IN THE MONEY!"

Ubisoft: The piracy is not because PC users are terrible criminals. It's because UPlay sucks balls. I own exactly one Ubisoft game that requires it (MIght and Magic Heroes 6) and UPlay is making me wish I had pirated it instead.
Pull your head out of the hole.
EDIT: Ah, also, I like how you calculated piracy rates. "5-7% of F2P gamers perform microtransactions, while the rest keep playing for free. Therefore, everybody who doesn't pay in F2P games are DIRTY PIRATES". No, that's not how it works.

uhhh, that piece of a sh!t Heroes 6, both conflux and Uplay riped my desire for Heroes 6. And game is also a shadow of previous products...

And dat calculation makes sense...
Not.

[Zaxares]

I bet this is a case of Ubisoft spinning the numbers to support their argument. Yes, if we're going by raw numbers, there probably are that many people with pirated copies of Assassin's Creed or whatever other games they have (I don't play Ubisoft games). BUT... What the execs don't realise is that just because somebody is a pirate doesn't mean that they would BUY your game if they couldn't obtain it for free anyway. In most cases, software pirates are people who would NEVER pay money for a game. ANY game. It doesn't matter what the genre or developer is. If they couldn't get any free pirated games, they'd move on to a different hobby. (Like playing free Flash games or something.)

Sure, there will be a segment of the population who would reluctantly pony up their money for games if piracy didn't exist, but if you believe that rock-solid DRM, assuming for a moment that DRM was truly uncrackable (which is a pipe dream) will somehow translate that 95% of pirates into paying customers, you're sadly mistaken. At best, I'd estimate that no more than 5% of pirates would actually pay money for a game if they couldn't get a pirated copy. (More than likely, they'd just find and play another game which WAS cracked.)

[zeypher]

I stopped playing and supporting ubisoft games ever since prince of persia: warrior within, due to its fuked up DRM fried my dvd drive off. That was the moment i swore off ubisoft published and made games. The one company whose games i preorder, support and buy is CDPR cause i know im safe from drm BS.

Besides if publishers want to treat a paying customer (me) as a thief, i might as well become one. The way i see it im a thief either way. So yea you want me to support you, treat me as a customer. If your mentality is to treat me as a thief, then i will go and do just that.

Until ubisoft learns they can go burn in hell for all i care. Funnily enough i do not mind origin, sure it has problems but its pricing for games is good here in India. Skyrim costed 4000 INR, ME3 costed me 1000 INR. I went and bought mass effect. Hell im liking it better than steam. Witcher 2 on steam is 40 US even in india which is 2200 INR, while on origin its for 1000 INR.

Modifié par zeypher, 23 août 2012 - 11:56 .

[Ozzy]

lmao.

Ubisoft are so full of **** that it's just incredible. What a joke.

[MerinTB]

Zaxares wrote...

I bet this is a case of Ubisoft spinning the numbers to support their argument. Yes, if we're going by raw numbers, there probably are that many people with pirated copies of Assassin's Creed or whatever other games they have (I don't play Ubisoft games). BUT... What the execs don't realise is that just because somebody is a pirate doesn't mean that they would BUY your game if they couldn't obtain it for free anyway. In most cases, software pirates are people who would NEVER pay money for a game. ANY game. It doesn't matter what the genre or developer is. If they couldn't get any free pirated games, they'd move on to a different hobby. (Like playing free Flash games or something.)

Sure, there will be a segment of the population who would reluctantly pony up their money for games if piracy didn't exist, but if you believe that rock-solid DRM, assuming for a moment that DRM was truly uncrackable (which is a pipe dream) will somehow translate that 95% of pirates into paying customers, you're sadly mistaken. At best, I'd estimate that no more than 5% of pirates would actually pay money for a game if they couldn't get a pirated copy. (More than likely, they'd just find and play another game which WAS cracked.)

Dingdingdingding.

"Lost potential sales" is the biggest crock of horse crap that was ever concocted.

Are you going to track down all those people who loan copies of their books or movies or CDs or games to people?  Are all of those "lost potential sales"?  Don't most people consider that loaning copies is as effective as word of mouth, and gets MORE sales in the end?

Those that would buy your game that pirate software, if they like the software, tend to as a rule BUY IT when they know they like it and scrounge together the funds.
Those that don't buy it after pirating it will NEVER buy it, and that was not a lost potential sale because it was a never sale.

You can argue it's illegal, and you can argue that you don't think it's right that they use the stuff without paying for it...

but drop the farce.  The vast, unshakable majority of those were never potential sales - except the ones that WERE sales anyway.

Modifié par MerinTB, 23 août 2012 - 03:02 .

[AlanC9]

MerinTB wrote...

Are you going to track down all those people who loan copies of their books or movies or CDs or games to people?  Are all of those "lost potential sales"?  Don't most people consider that loaning copies is as effective as word of mouth, and gets MORE sales in the end?

Does it really get you more sales? Is more recorded music being sold than, say, 15 years ago?

[MerinTB]

Gatt9 wrote...
Gamers want to play great games.  Publishers are trying to force revenue schemes on Gamers.  What we have here is Divx vs DVD*.  It'll end the same way.  Consumers will find new producers and the Publishers will find themselves losing massive amounts of revenue.

*Divx was a competitor for DVD,  sold mainly by Circuit City.  You bought the player,  bought the Divx disc for $15-$20,  and after you watched it,  it would expire.  If you wanted to watch it again,  you had to pay to unlock the disc again.  It didn't last long,  so probably almost no one hear heard of it.

I was working in the video rental industry around the time that was dreamed up - Steven Spielberg was a big proponent of it.

They also had the plans for disposable discs - especially for rental stores.  You'd "rent" the disc, but once opened and exposed to oxygen the disc would start to decay and within 48 hours the disc would be unusable and you'd just throw it away - no late fees! <--- sarcastic excitement.

AOL discs already were creating landfill problems - can you imagine what THAT would have done?

Yep, DivX died (well, the video codec for it survived) because no consumers wanted this.  DRM and such crap will go the same way.

The game industry (business side) is making the mistake that (stepping gently on eggshells here) the "casual gamer" is supposedly the guys and gals on their smartphones and facebook who don't "buy" games but will play free ones with friends to kill time and then, like vanity sleeves for their iPads or plates for their iPhones, they'll dish out money here and there for cosmetic items in said games.  At first blush, this seems right.

The problem is, like the majority of Wii console buyers, these AREN'T gamers.  Sure, gamers do buy Wii's and play Facebook games - but those LARGE NUMBERS they are seeing are not gamers and won't be a reliable and consistent source of revenue.

It's like politicians constantly screwing over their base to try to appeal to that mythical "independent voter" - who are really apathetic, uninformed and unlikely to vote in any discernable pattern.  You upset the people who support you, and you never win over those who don't really care enough to pay attention most of the time.

The successful model would be making the best product they could for their consistant, energized base and try to GROW that base with advertising and positive word of mouth.

But, like every major power over the centuries, they see China's population and only envision each person there as a dollar sign.  Facebook is China - there are lots of people there, but good luck making money on most of them.

[MerinTB]

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
Are you going to track down all those people who loan copies of their books or movies or CDs or games to people?  Are all of those "lost potential sales"?  Don't most people consider that loaning copies is as effective as word of mouth, and gets MORE sales in the end?

Does it really get you more sales? Is more recorded music being sold than, say, 15 years ago?

It is FAR harder to track music sales now than it was 15 years ago.

15 years ago it was almost all retail store sales.  Sure, there were web sites and some online sales... but Amazon hadn't even turned a profit yet and you're looking at just about the time of the dot com bubble bursting (little before)... there were still music stores and Best Buy's had a large portion of it's floorspace given over to music.  They could track sales to retail stores and extrapolate fairly well.

NOW, post 2010, there are so many ways to get music and they don't effectively track digital sales (like with PC games) so they have a really hard time measuring music sales.  You have so many online options for physical and digital purchases....

On top of this, in the late 90's we were at the height (or just past the peak, perhaps) of the music industry controlling the entire arena - they made the bands, decided what would be promoted so they knew what would be the big hits, had deals with radio stations...  there were smaller bands and indie stuff, sure, but without much presence on the internet yet, most music purchases were easily tracked via a handful of "popular" acts.

NOW, post 2010, between social networks and digital storefronts, stuff like Pandora.... consumers don't have to rely on the radio and their immediate friends and family for exposure to new music.  There are countless ways to find music that more specifically fits your individual tastes instead of picking the best of the handful of what the recording industry is offering you this year.  It's easy to say the music industry is "strong" when a Britney Spears or NSync sells X number of copies... it's much harder to gauge how well music is selling when hundreds of artists and bands are each selling a small fraction of X that those 90's bands sold.

I have no evidence and figure it would take quite some effort to try and create a fact-based thesis on what I'm about to assert, but I'd personally argue that music sells MORE now than it did 15 years ago, much more, but that the recording industry isn't doing comparatively as well... because they have lost their stranglehold.

[MerinTB]

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
Are you going to track down all those people who loan copies of their books or movies or CDs or games to people?  Are all of those "lost potential sales"?  Don't most people consider that loaning copies is as effective as word of mouth, and gets MORE sales in the end?

Does it really get you more sales? Is more recorded music being sold than, say, 15 years ago?

As for loaning getting more sales - I don't know of any studies, they may or may not exist...

but from personal experience?  Oh yes.  Many of my favorite things -
Hitchhiker's Guide, Strangers In Paradise, Roxette, SSI's AD&D games, Neverwhere... and the list can go and on... are things that friends loaned me, I loved them, then bought them myself!

[Blastback]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!  Riiiiiiight.  Show me where they got that number, and I might consider taking them seriously. 

[termokanden]

I want to know how anyone here claims to know what the piracy rates are like.

Like you've caught and counted every single pirate...

Modifié par termokanden, 23 août 2012 - 06:09 .

[Xewaka]

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
Are you going to track down all those people who loan copies of their books or movies or CDs or games to people?  Are all of those "lost potential sales"?  Don't most people consider that loaning copies is as effective as word of mouth, and gets MORE sales in the end?

Does it really get you more sales? Is more recorded music being sold than, say, 15 years ago?

Neil Gaiman on loans. I think it is relevant. (It is also relevant to the main topic, piracy).

Modifié par Xewaka, 23 août 2012 - 09:03 .

[MerinTB]

Xewaka wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
Are you going to track down all those people who loan copies of their books or movies or CDs or games to people?  Are all of those "lost potential sales"?  Don't most people consider that loaning copies is as effective as word of mouth, and gets MORE sales in the end?

Does it really get you more sales? Is more recorded music being sold than, say, 15 years ago?

Neil Gaiman on loans. I think it is relevant. (It is also relevant to the main topic, piracy).

That's a great video.  I linked to it often in the past.

[MerinTB]

Here's a fun math test -

If Piracy Rate for PC games is 95%, here are some numbers on using vgchartz numbers for "sales" -

Assassin's Creed Revelations (PC sales): 360,000 worldwide. So, really, that means over 7 million people are playing it on PC. Quite a popular game, no? That's right around X360 and PS3 combined! I guess I could believe that number.
StarCraft II : 3.6 million. So, really, that's over 70 million people playing StarCraft 2. Holy crap!

Wikipedia says that Dawn of War sold 4 million copies. So, really, that's like 80 million people playing it. I never knew Warhammer was so popular! Who says PC gaming is dead - find one console game with THAT MANY PLAYERS!

Now, wait for it...
from Blizzard's own mouth, Diablo 3 has exceed 10 million copies sold.
So 200 million people are playing Diablo 3. Staggering.

"But Blizzard's Diablo 3 fights piracy effectively!"

Okay, let's say I give you that for D3 and SC2...

The Sims 3 has sold 10 million copies. So clearly 200 million people are playing that, right?

[MurderHouse]

I doubt it is that high that is way passed bankruptcy levels for any Industry. The music industry may suffer from piracy at that rate.

F2P models aren't so bad if done reasonably like avoiding pay to win packages with super equipment. I have also been playing a game called Blacktlight: Retribution you can get it on Steam F2P. It is extremely well done and the F2P model is excellent. The balancing is well done and if you don't want to do micro transactions for purchasing new weapons and gear you can 'rent' gear and weapons for a set length of time like 1 or 2 days. Quite awesome and you earn a lot of these credits quickly game from game based on your performance.

MMO's in experience don't seem to suffer from F2P models. 

Modifié par MurderHouse, 23 août 2012 - 09:56 .