Way to go Ubisoft - Again! 95% of PC gamers are pirates

Goooner

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http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/ubisoft-95-of-pc-gamers-are-pirates/028997

They've really got it in for pc gamers haven't they? :)

They gives the ridiculous always online DRM, where you can sometimes go whole weekends without being able to play games you've actually bought and now they insult us :D

I'm sure there's a fair share of gamers that don't pay for games, but 95%? I find that hard to believe.
 
How do they calculate the piracy rate?

I would guess that it's pretty bad with all PC games, but 19 out of every 20 copies being pirated seems a bit much!
 
i fight real pirates... ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGggggggggggg
 
A more accurate assessment is that Ubisoft release 95% of their games with bugs.
 
So does every publisher. I think Ubisoft is one of the few that actually puts effort into their PC games. It's the DRM and delays that let them down.
 
*******.
 
Hillskill said:
What's a pirates fave star wars character? arrrgghh too dee too!

Genius. I'm gonna remember that one!
 
Lol.. still trying to get my anno 2070 to work through firewall and modem and isp. So don't mention these guys ever again pls... 5 mnths and counting... would send it back but really want to play it as I enjoyed the demo.
 
I imagine piracy is very common in certain countries, which is why some countries get the games a lot cheaper than, for example, Europe does. 90-95% sounds a stupid amount though, i'd love to know where they got that number from (thin air I imagine).
 
I would have thought from reading this and other forums that most of the pirated downloads are legitimate users who've bought their games, just trying to get the b****y things to work!
 
I imagine piracy is very common in certain countries, which is why some countries get the games a lot cheaper than, for example, Europe does. 90-95% sounds a stupid amount though, i'd love to know where they got that number from (thin air I imagine).
It seems high, but then other devs/publishers have made similar claims.

The developers of The Witcher 2 claimed that it was downloaded illegally 4.5 million times at a point where it had sold 1 million units, so that's over 80% piracy rate.

The developers of World of Goo claimed that the piracy rate was 80-90% and they had stats to back that up.

I highly doubt that Ubisoft have just pulled a figure out of thin air, but their methodology may well be flawed.
 
But how many of the 4.5m that downloaded Witcher 2 illegally would have bought a copy had they not been able to pirate it? Nowhere near 4.5m I bet. It'd be interesting to know how many people that regularly pirate games actually play them for more than an hour, I know I haven't got time to pay all the games I've paid for over the years, let alone pirating even more :)

The only time I've ever bothered with cracks or anything is for the convenience of paying a game without having to put the cd/DVD in or if for some reason the copy protection prevents me from playing my legally bought copy.

If Ubisoft don't think there's money in developing pc games, just stop making them don't keep making excuses.
 
i fight real pirates... ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGggggggggggg

hacks are good against pirates :laugh: getting old this now but some how i still find it bloody funny :D :rolleyes:
 
What an insult to gamers to suggest that. They've pulled that figure out of their arse. More like 5-7% are pirates.

I don't play your games Ubi because the vast majority of what you produce is garbage. Probably from their twisted view that makes me a pirate too.

Guillemot you turd.
 
But how many of the 4.5m that downloaded Witcher 2 illegally would have bought a copy had they not been able to pirate it? Nowhere near 4.5m I bet.
Right, but that's shifting the goalposts. Ubisoft didn't say that X number of people pirated the game and out of that number, Y would have bought it. They just said that X number of people pirated it.

I've already given 2 examples of other devs/pubs that put the rate above 80%, but there are others: -

A recent study by THQ shows that piracy rates for PC games in the US are somewhere around 80%.
THQ pegs PC piracy rate as high as 80% - SlashGear

Beautiful Game Studios general manager Roy Meredith has told CVG that there's a 90 percent piracy rate for the developer's Championship Manager series.
PC News: Champ Man has 90 percent piracy rate - CVG UK
 
So... looking at it as different way.. if Microsoft had made Windows 3.1 or office in the old days online only.. do we think that they would dominate the pc market? I am not saying pirates are good I just think it is convenient that a company that produces games that have to connect to their servers even for single player happens to also suggest such a high number of pirated copies.....
 
Let me give you a nexample from the set top box world - in Russia STBs don't sell well unless they have a P2P client built in.
 
I would have thought the increasing popularity of services like Steam renders Ubisoft's piracy figures inaccurate.

Then again, I haven't bought a Ubisoft game for years and don't intend to any time soon. They are a company I generally steer clear of alongside EA and Activision.
 
I would have thought the increasing popularity of services like Steam renders Ubisoft's piracy figures inaccurate.

Then again, I haven't bought a Ubisoft game for years and don't intend to any time soon. They are a company I generally steer clear of alongside EA and Activision.

I was the same, stopped buying them after they started the always connected DRM thing.

Then Anno 2070 came up in the last Steam sale and loads of people were saying how great it was, so I gave in and bought it. Couldn't play it for 2 days because the Uplay server was down. That's the last Ubisoft game I buy on PC.
 
Right, but that's shifting the goalposts. Ubisoft didn't say that X number of people pirated the game and out of that number, Y would have bought it. They just said that X number of people pirated it.

I've already given 2 examples of other devs/pubs that put the rate above 80%, but there are others: -


THQ pegs PC piracy rate as high as 80% - SlashGear


PC News: Champ Man has 90 percent piracy rate - CVG UK

Also how many of X pirated it to try it, liked it and bought it?

I just find the whole 95% thing hard to believe, much like the standard line the movie/record companies come out with about "every download being a lost sale" when quite clearly it's not.
 
I do not believe for one second that 95% piracy rates equates to 95% loss in sales.

That being said, like it or not, the facts are that pc games ARE pirated multiple times more than console games.

Sure, the xbox and PS3 can be hacked to play copied games, but it takes a certain savvy to do this, and even then you are risking permanently screwing your console from going online.

I know so many people who have pirated software, and most of these guys are on PC. I am not wearing any halo myself either! I would be a down right liar if I said I had never copied anything. These days I dont bother, my disposable income is better now and my gaming time less, plus online plays a larger part of my gaming and generally online gaming is some what crippled with hookie copies, but it still means I have been part of the problem myself.
I also suspect this kind of subject brings about the largest amount of self denial and hypocrisy over any other topic I can think off. I know so many people who are happy to say pc game pirates are scum and yet are happy to torrent music/films/MS Office/what ever (again I am not innocent here either so dont think I am preaching).

Ubisoft may be exaggerating, but step back for a minute.

There is no conspiracy against PC gamers, I am sure when crytek / etc made their AAA pc game with a shed load of money invested in it they were not hoping it would get pirated to hell to give them an excuse to jump ship. These guys are in it to make money, hate console gamers all you like but imo if it was not for consoles and their fairly low piracy levels I suspect there would be even fewer AAA titles coming out for pc.

When even PC Die hards like Carmack come out and say piracy is killing the platform I think it is time to take heads out of the sand and accept there must be some truth in it.

From another angle, years ago, to be able to game well on a pc you had to have a fairly expensive high end rig, so you may have argued that pc games sell less numbers than console as not everyone has a pc capable of running games.

This has changed now however, pretty much even low-mid range pc's are gaming ready, capable of running most titles at at least middling specs. With this in mind, I would say there are more gaming capable pcs in the average home than ever before.

PC games are cheaper than console games

People constantly tell me (many on this forum) that PC gaming is now as easy and convenient as any console gaming (I disagree but thats another topic)

All these things SHOULD be meaning that pc sales will outstrip console sales, and by a decent margin, but (apparently) this is just not the case. PC gaming right now has everything going for it to outsell console gaming, certainly the games are generally far better on pc. If pc games cant outsell their console couterparts when competing against 7 year old hardware, what chance do they have in 12 - 18 months when the next gen of consoles hit?.

sorry for long post
 
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