Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#1

Post by anons2011 » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:08 PM UTC

Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay
torrentfreak.com

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#2

Post by debacle » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:19 PM UTC

Ergo, 95% of your users are not your customers.

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#3

Post by djt » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:35 PM UTC

I wonder if charging $5 for the game would lead to a massive increase in the % that pay. Steam did a lot of testing around this, hence having F2P (TF2) and $20 games with discounts (L4D etc)

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#4

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:36 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#5

Post by lucisferre » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:36 PM UTC

I checked both this article and the articles referenced in it and could not find a single place where they back that number up with any hard research. Willing to bet there wasn't any.

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#6

Post by ZoFreX » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:37 PM UTC

debacle wrote: post #2

Ergo, 95% of your users are not your customers.

And yet the 95% enjoy a far higher quality product than the 5% that actually pay, when it comes to Ubisoft games.

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#7

Post by buster » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:38 PM UTC

I really don't believe that number. Even when i was a poor pupil and student and pirated stuff, never ever was my games collection 95% pirated. And that was when most games weren't bound to having an internet connection or used multiplayer on the internet.

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#8

Post by stephengillie » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:39 PM UTC

“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,” [Ubisoft CEO Yves] Guillemot said.

Their customers convert from free-to-paying and from pirate-to-paying at the same rate. Releasing a game as free-to-play doesn't cut into their revenue stream, since it'll just be pirated anyway. The same number of people will pay for it, either way. Essentially, DRM is a pointless expense for them.

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#9

Post by slowpoke » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:39 PM UTC

Too bad that Free2Play will almost always inevitably lead to Pay4Fun. I've see few games where this wasn't the case (the first few years of GuildWars being an example, I don't know about the current state of affairs). More often than not, it doesn't become "cashing in to get a better experience", it's "requiring money to play properly at all". And I don't trust the major publishers with their history of retarded DLC to do any good in that regard.

Re: Ubisoft: PC Piracy Levels 95%, and 95% of Free-To-Play Users Do Not Pay

#10

Post by astrodust » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:40 PM UTC

debacle wrote: post #2

Ergo, 95% of your users are not your customers.

It could be that a lot of customers buy the boxed product, then install the warez version because it doesn't have any DRM associated with it. This doesn't clarify how they know the games are pirated.

Ubisoft is one of the worst offenders lately when it comes to treating their customers like criminals. Even products bought through Steam have all kinds of added on DRM and CD-Key nonsense.