Ubisoft CEO: 95% Of Our Customers Are Pirates

TheGardenTool said:
I'm guessing the number is so high due to the lack of players. A lot of people wrote Ubisoft a long time ago. I can't even remember the last PC game I've bought of theirs that one of their studios they owned at the time or even published was. I think it was Shadowbane.
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Wait I did buy Rainbow Six 6 Vegas and Vegas 2 about 2 years ago through Steam. So Shadowbane was the last boxed game in 2003 and then a 6 year gap until I bought one of their games digitally. Yeah not a lot of their stuff is worth it anymore.
 
Wouldn't the 95% of the people playing the games but not paying for them not be considered customers?
 
After experiencing Ghost Recon Future Soldier, I can sincerely say it wasn't worth the 60 bucks I paid on release day, and it sure as hell isn't worth pirating either. It attempted to be Battlefield and Call of Duty at the same time, and failing horribly.

When your game isn't even worth bandwidth, that's a pretty shitty game.
 
So for every 1 million copies sold, and I'm sure they have at least a few PC games that have reached that mark, they can account for 20,000,000 users having played it? Or roughly half the entire Steam userbase.

In 2011 the most downloaded PC games never topped the 4 million download mark worldwide. I'd be interested in seeing "piracy" stats broken down by region, considering a lot of those downloads probably come from areas where publishers are happy to get any kind of sales, and offer their games at a significant discount compared to what the major markets pay.
 
Corporate Goon said:
I bought HOMM6 a few months ago on Steam. It worked for awhile but was super buggy and there was a lot of problems with their ridiculous DRM schem. A few weeks ago, they released a "patch" that completely broke the game on my computer (and on many other people's computers). The game simply won't start. I've uninstalled and reinstalled, updated my drivers, tried a few things that other players have suggested, nothing works. Same story for many others.

...
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I love HOMM but I will barely buy Steam DRM titles ($10 or less only). I'm sure as hell not buying anything Ubisoft produces - their DRM is the most ridiculous, and as a company, I know their attitude seems to be "buy our stuff, if the DRM doesn't work for you, tough, we have your money already. Sucker!"

I still play HOMM3. I keep hoping somehow the rights to HOMM get bought by someone else that doesn't suck so bad. Meanwhile I bought the new King's Bounty a year or two back from GOG (haven't gotten around to playing it though).
 
Make good games. Sell them at a reasonable price. Be good to your gaming community.

You will never beat the pirates.
 
I will not not in any shape or form patronize Ubisoft. I don't buy their games and I don't pirate their games. I will not play their F2P. I think they are everything wrong with game making and hope that they go financially bankrupt to match the bankruptcy of their souls.
 
At the 95% piracy rate they should be out of business no? That implies that 5% of their non-pirating clientele are actually keep them afloat and making a profit too? If that's the case, the issue is what again?
 
Kelby said:
Yves Guillemot, you are a piece of shit. Give me back all the money I spent on your Splinter Cell games and then you can call me a pirate.
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Why are they number one? EA is just as bad if not worse just buying out competition and Activision does n't even try to innovate or make any new IPs.

entropy13 said:
There are also 15 studies proving this value.
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Where are your sources. Even if they exist, it doesn't mean they are valid. Most studies that polititicians use to make say videogame sold age limits, contain junk data or don't fit the proper scientific study model. As such they are invalid studies.
 
I do not get ubisoft at all.

Does this guy just not care about PR? Do they not have a PR person? He needs to tell this guy to shut the hell up.

All he does is bash the pc players, make the LEGIT customers who pay money feel like shit by treating them as "lower class" then console players (IE pushing pc versions back a month, for no reason but simply to do it).

It's like this guy WANTS people to pirate ubisoft games because all he does is piss everoyne off.
 
ballistic90 said:
I'd imagine that 95% of their PC game users use cracks so they don't have to install DRM. I would think that's where they get those numbers from.
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You're probably right. I know I've bought games (can't recall if any were Ubisoft titles) only to groan a 'No CD" patch just so I could play the game without all the DRM hassles. Did I buy the game? yes, would they say I pirated it? most likely. :rolleyes:
 
Ubisoft: Fix your piece-of-shit Uplay DRM, and then we can talk. If you didn't force Uplay down your loyal, voluntarily-paying customers throats--using DRM that interferes with the gameplay for games it's supposed to work on--then maybe fewer people would actually pirate your games. Though I highly doubt your numbers...

Honestly, until Uplay, I was 'meh' about DRM. Until then, I never had a bad experience with it. But--for whatever reason, crappy developers, bugs in code, who knows what--I experienced in Driver SF what most other people did with Uplay (persistent intermittent video freezing when there's an active internet connection. Disable your internet connection--and not change anything else--and magically the problem goes away. And I haven't played the game since the day I bought it. Was half-tempted to ask for a refund through steam on account of a non-playable game.

In principle, I couldn't care less about DRM. I just don't see how it's so impossible to make DRM that is almost-transparent to the user. Steam comes close, but of course there's everyone's concern about losing internet connection...
 
The only reason Ubisoft has received any money from me, and it has been more than a little, is because of piracy. The whining and bitching is not only ignorant, and but it's infantile and defaces the IPs the company owns.
 
Would also like it if my Ubisoft game availability were all the time, rather than when their draconian DRM is working.
 
I don't think I have ever touched any Ubisoft game and I've being playing for over 25 years now.

They're worse than Sony. I don't of that shovelware as games.
 
DogChainX said:
Not going to read through the thread, so its probably been covered. How can you be a customer if you stole the product? Shouldn't it be "95% of our users are savvy techno-nerds hating our out-dated DRM model?"
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"who are also amoral selfish twits".

If you hate their outdated DRM model, don't buy their software. Doesn't give you a right to steal it.
 
Corporate Goon said:
"who are also amoral selfish twits".

If you hate their outdated DRM model, don't buy their software. Doesn't give you a right to steal it.
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I don't buy their (Ubisoft) software, and I don't pirate it either. ;)

What I have done with companies like Ubisoft, is buy the game 1-2 years later at $5.00, and then download the pirated version as well so I don't have to deal with the useless and irritating DRM.

I do that a lot with music too.
 
>Make most intrusive DRM system ever, worse then Battle.net, worse then Securom and GFWL together
>DRM is faulty, awful, barely works IF it even works period
>Limited game installs, limited times you can download game from their service
>Instead of trying to work with the PC industry, you try to take it the fuck over with trying to get other developers to "Sign up!" with your network of bullshit, restrictive installs and downloads system.
>DRM only serves to fuck over your legitimate customers of your games, pirates actually get a 50x better experience
>When your PC versions of said game sell fuck all, blame pirates instead of your lackluster products, your shitty business practices and your draconian DRM schemes bid to take over PC gaming.
>When spouting off numbers out the ass, refuse to mention digital sales of PC games, which more then 85% of PC game sales are digital, instead only talk about boxed copies sold in stores, and go around giving interviews to magazines going "SEE! WE ONLY SOLD 700K COPIES OF ASSASSINS CREED REVELATIONS ON PC! THIS IS WHY WE MADE THIS DRM! THIS IS WHY WE ARE GOING TO KEEP DOING IT! IF PC GAME COMPANIES WANT TO SURVIVE, THEY NEED TO SIGN UP WITH OUR SYSTEM!!!"

What the fuck happened? In the last 2-3 years, every major publisher has tried to -TAKE OVER- the PC gaming market. They want to control it, manipulate every faccet of it for green harvest.

You know why STEAM works as a DRM? Cause its secure, its unobtrusive, and its -NOT- just designed to make them money! Steam was invented because all the publishers in the world were strangling the fucking shit out of PC developers on computer, and PC developers finally had enough of being fucked around, and seeing how effective steam was at not only being DRM, but being a service that was built to make -THEM- money and not Valve money, all developers flocked to it overnight.

Steam takes a -MINOR- cut on game purchases, less then boxed copies, it also offers for life the ability to download your games as many times as you want, that you own your games for life etc etc, something that Uplay and Origin won't let you do. "Well, you should have fully played your games after a year, if you want to play them more, you should buy another copy!"

Steam also proves that -SALES- is what is making PC gaming the biggest industry in gaming ATM. Companies that refuse to do discounts/sales often flounder, but STEAM deals/sale days/Sales events have proven that yeah, you sold your game for 50% off, but you also sold 10x the amount of games, generating far more profit then if you never took a cut, something that publishers can't fucking grasp.
 
Didn't they call the people who play free to play pirates as well? If so, then they are customers.

This is just stupidity at it's finest. (I haven't read the article, it's blocked)
 
Welp, maybe, Ubisoft will go the way of EA, trying to find a buyer.

Nothing in their selection that I will really miss.
 
I used to love her, but I had to kill her. I had to put her, 6 feet under, but I still hear her complain aahahah.

Seriously who is on the boards of these companies to put these disconnected idiots in charge. I loved ubi at one point, but everytime this fool opens his mouth...
 
Fuck them, not a customer no more! I have never pirated a game, any game. And for the record I have 190 games in my steam account right now.

That doesn't count the hundreds I have bought before steam.
 
pothb said:
Didn't they call the people who play free to play pirates as well? If so, then they are customers.

This is just stupidity at it's finest. (I haven't read the article, it's blocked)
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He said the percentage of non paying F2P players is the same as those who pirates their game.

“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.
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I think his games just suck that hard, F2P or not.;)
 
Assassin's creed sales were something like 5 million right? So is he claiming that the game should've gotten ........200 million in sales?

Hahahaha, now there's someone who's stuck so far up his own ass he can't see a glimmer of the sun.
 
If Ubisoft hates PC gamers/users so muich, they should just stick to console development and not port their shitty games to PC, I don't want a PC game that has intrusive DRM, while pirates can crack the shit out of it and not having to hassle with it. Lose situation really for Ubisoft to implement DRM to legit customers while the DRM is useless towards pirates.
 
I've seen the 95% figure in relation to F2P games before. I believe Freemium games work to around that figure to make a profit. Basically those playing for free provide the added value for those playing and paying.
 
Serpent said:
Assassin's creed sales were something like 5 million right? So is he claiming that the game should've gotten ........200 million in sales?

Hahahaha, now there's someone who's stuck so far up his own ass he can't see a glimmer of the sun.
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In his fucked up mind the only numbers are 95% and eleventy billion.
 
I don't own any Ubisoft games, therefore I must be a pirate, right? Wrong. I don't have any Ubisoft games at all. Accusing everyone of being pirates is not going to make me buy their games either. When are these idiots going to learn that piracy is not the rampant problem they think it to be, and that maybe people will buy more games if they drop the prices and up the quality a bit?
 
I haven't bought any Ubisoft game for the longest time either. I got a coupon for a free game from them a while back that came with some hardware, and took AC2. Didn't pay for it so I must be a pirate!

Actually did enjoy it quite a bit once I got around to playing it. Enough that I did end up buying AC2:B, but only because it was super cheap on a Steam sale.
 
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