Hello Guest, welcome to torrentinvites.org - Your #1 source for Torrent Invites!
CLICK HERE to register for free and gain full access to TI.org!
Torrent Invites! Buy, Trade, Sell Or Find Free Invites, For EVERY Private Tracker! HDBits.org, BTN, PTP, MTV, Empornium, Orpheus, Bibliotik, RED, IPT, TL, PHD etc!
-
Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay
Source.
The CEO of games giant Ubisoft has revealed an interesting parallel in the company’s business models. Speaking at Gamescom this week, Yves Guillemot said that around 95% of players of the company’s boxed PC games are pirates. Equally, of all players of the company’s free-to-play games who can voluntarily part with cash to obtain a better experience, 95% choose not to pay a dime. Nevertheless, the latter model can be a great opportunity to beat piracy.
In recent years games company Ubisoft have hit the headlines not only for creating some great games, but also having some of the most intrusive DRM schemes the industry has to offer.
For example, the first implementation of the DRM in the PC version of Driver: San Francisco required users users to be permanently connected to the Internet to play, although user backlash meant that the company backtracked on the policy.
What has become apparent in recent times through this and similar experiences is that DRM only hurts paying customers and does little to stop pirates from releasing hassle-free versions of Ubisoft games online. But with DRM or without, according to Ubisoft piracy levels are massive.
Speaking with GamesIndustry International editor Matt Martin at Gamescom this week, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot indicated that piracy levels of their standard ‘boxed’ games is currently sitting at between 93% and 95%.
Representatives for Ubisoft have complained bitterly about piracy in the past, and have openly blamed it for the company choosing not to release games to the PC market. Interestingly though, there is another way.
Guillemot says that the free-to-play model (F2P) has been a great tool for Ubisoft to market their products to areas of the world where piracy of PC games is at such a level that turning a profit has proven impossible.
“We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it,” Guillemot said. “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.”
The Ubisoft CEO said that the F2P framework is a good way to get closer to customers, hopefully with a view to enticing them to make the optional and hopefully repeating payments the model needs to survive. Interestingly, the percentage of people who pirate Ubisoft’s boxed products matches almost exactly with the percentage who chose not to pay in the F2P model.
“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,” Guillemot said.
Although the choose-not-to-pay crowd is large, good revenues are still available. As revealed by Electronic Arts last year after it targeted South Korea with FIFA Online, F2P can prove lucrative, even more so than traditional models.
“We gave the FIFA disc away free,” CEO John Riccitiello said. “But, instead of charging people for software, we charged small payments within the game: 5p for injury updates, 10p for a new strip. We found that 10 per cent of all Korean households downloaded FIFA online and the consumer paid us more online than they would have done buying the game in a store.”
-
In 21 century all see just money, problem will be that people will pay for it.
-
Senior Member
I think ubisoft should stop calling there pc gamers pirates. Honestly with all the drm shi* we get no wonder people go to piracy. For example, Assassin creed 2 for PC had DRM that made it so when you want to play the game, you have to connect to one of there servers to make sure its not pirated. Which in this case mean't people without internet could not play the game. While pirates on the other hand were able to defeat the drm and making it so you would not have to connect to the server in the first place! Ubisoft here's a word of advice.
TREAT YOUR PC CUSTOMERS BETTER!
-
User
Its funny how companies scream boo hoo over piracy, when the majority of pirated versions are way better then the original,
because these days they have patches, the programmers are lazy and release half ass games into the community.
And also I'll give an example, a man wants a hat, he sees there are 2 hats for sale one is $60+ with no promise of it being a game worth that price or a hat that is the exact same except free and not a major drama to get on your head, which one would you choose.
COD, Battle Field and Guitar hero are PRETTY much the same games over and over again, so it can be understood why people decide to pirate games, because the gaming industry is letting us down, not saying they all are, there are some gaming companies out there who are pushing the limits but many of them haven't broken that mainstream veil
the gaming industry shouldn't be about making money by using the same idea again and again until you've killed it
it's about expanding on a successful thought, its about taking things to the next level, and earning being paid
because I don't buy games but when I feel the people who made that game worked hard to deliver their product, I go straight out and buy that game
Tags for this Thread
Posting Permissions
- You may not post new threads
- You may not post replies
- You may not post attachments
- You may not edit your posts
-
Forum Rules