Ubisoft Bemoans 95% Piracy Rate

[The Artificially Prolonged]

95% of the market is not pirating your games Ubisoft. 95% of the market is fed up with your treatment of them and has decided to give other people their money. Seriously shareholders if you value profit whip these Ubisoft clowns into shape.

 

[DrOswald]

Because I'm primarily a console gamer, I'm kind of unfamiliar with this DRM/anti-piracy controversy. However, the economics of this situation really interest me. The author of the RPS article makes some claims about evidence showing that piracy rarely leads to lost sales and that there is anecdotal evidence that it even encourages them. Could somebody just give me a quick rundown on the accepted theory as to why that is? To me, that seems counterintuitive; I would expect piracy to severely hurt sales. What's the deal?

It is generally accepted that media companies in general greatly overestimate the negative impact of piracy. Often the impact of piracy is measured in a 1 to 1 way, suggesting that every instance of pirating is a lost sale. This is a stupid thing to say, it is rare for people to have the money to cover all the piracy they get up to. That is why they pirate it. The actual impact varies greatly from product to product and is impossible to measure.

As for the positive effects of piracy, it basically boils down to word of mouth advertisement. My friend pirates a game, loves it and shows it to me, and I buy a copy of a game I would never have considered. Piracy has generated 1 sale for this game. This sort of thing actually happens quite often, though I highly doubt it completely counters the negative effects.

 

[dickywebster]

95% of companies that complain about piracy been a problem would take my money without giving me anything in return if they could.
Or control the internet, oh wait they tried that one...
But this making statistics up is fun

 

[DoPo]

Because I'm primarily a console gamer, I'm kind of unfamiliar with this DRM/anti-piracy controversy. However, the economics of this situation really interest me. The author of the RPS article makes some claims about evidence showing that piracy rarely leads to lost sales and that there is anecdotal evidence that it even encourages them. Could somebody just give me a quick rundown on the accepted theory as to why that is? To me, that seems counterintuitive; I would expect piracy to severely hurt sales. What's the deal?

Easy - for illustration purposes, let's assume that we have a game that sold 1000 copies and was illegally downloaded 5000 times from, say, a torrent tracker. The game costs $20, so it made profit of $20 000 but missed another $100 000 it seems. Let's examine this:

1. One illegal download does not a unique person. It's easy, yes? I can download the game twice or three times easily. Other people can do so, too. That's not to say that everybody pirates the game multiple times but it's enough to say that it's not 5000 different people that did the downloading.
2. Assuming someone managed to prevent all illegal downloads, the pirates might not have bought the game anyway. Not all of them would have skipped it, heck, probably a large-ish portion would have spent money on it, if there was no other way, however, the fact remains - not every single person who is included in those 5000 pirated copies would be a lost sale. They are, however, partially lost sales. Perhaps 1 in 4 people would have actually bought the game. Or 1 in 2. Or maybe it's 1 in 20, who knows (depends how good the game is). But not all of them.
3. There is overlap. Let's say, I pirated the game, liked it, and decided to buy it. Now I occupy both statistics. I'm a lost sale. Or perhaps I bought the game but displaced the CD and/or was just too lazy - in short, I got it off a torrent tracker afterwards. Again, I am part of both the "legal" and "illegal" numbers there. And who is to say that I'm the only one. Maybe there is 50 of us - 5% of the total sales and at least 1% of the illegal downloads.

Now, add these all together and it's pretty clear that our fictional scenario isn't missing out on 100 grand. Make no mistake, there is a loss but it's not as big as we initially estimated.

In the real world, there is quite more things involved but overall, the general trend remains - a pirated copy is not a lost sale. Perhaps 100 or 1000 (we could even go for 10 000 and above, depending on the popularity of the game and other factors) of them are equal to one full priced copy but to claim all of them are, is outrageous.

 

[mrdude2010]

It sounds like an invented statistic. Let's assume it's true for a second. It's a good thing they put all that DRM in, because it definitely doesn't annoy regular customers and definitely combats piracy effectively

 

[Wayneguard]

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Thanks for the replies. Food for thought

 

[The Madman]

Ubisoft make me very very sad. I want so hard to play some of their games: I've always been a massive fan of the Heroes of Might & Magic series for example, I want to play the newest game in that series. But the way Ubisoft handle seemingly everything PC related just rubs me the wrong way and I'm left sadly waving farewell to games I otherwise would have bought.

Incidentally the 95% piracy rate isn't that out there. As mentioned previously in this topic 2D boy were able to prove a piracy rate in the high 80's and they're an indie developer. It's just Ubisofts response that's so offsetting. I realize not every developer can be CDProjekt, but still Ubisoft is seemingly determined to make things as difficult as possible for legitimate PC customers as possible.

 

[DoPo]

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Thanks for the replies. Food for thought

If you're interested, here [http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html] is something to provide even more food for thought. It is a pretty good overview of piracy, maybe not entirely accurate but still a nice read.

 

[Wayneguard]

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Thanks for the replies. Food for thought

If you're interested, here [http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html] is something to provide even more food for thought. It is a pretty good overview of piracy, maybe not entirely accurate but still a nice read.

Thank you VERY much for this. This is exactly what I was looking for. I think his analyses of the free-rider problem and economies of scale are a little incorrect; but otherwise, this is very good stuff.

 

[DoPo]

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Thanks for the replies. Food for thought

If you're interested, here [http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html] is something to provide even more food for thought. It is a pretty good overview of piracy, maybe not entirely accurate but still a nice read.

Thank you VERY much for this. This is exactly what I was looking for. I think his analyses of the free-rider problem and economies of scale are a little incorrect; but otherwise, this is very good stuff.

Yeah, as I said, it may not be entirely accurate but overall it's the best article I've found that connects as many things together as possible. Informative, although you would need to do some research of your own, not just take everything for granted. It is a very good starting point, at least.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Let's see Ubisoft games I own...AC1, AC2, ACB, ACR

I used to have PoP:SoT but sold it. Rented PoP 2/3. They were ok.

I payed money for all of them, so I guess I'm in the 5%.

Ubisoft games I will pirate: None.

Ubisoft Games I'm planning on buying: None

Was an AC fan, but AC3 is one I have no trouble passing up.

My opinion of Ubisoft has gotten pretty low, and I don't even factor in DRM (PS3).

 

[Something Amyss]

1. One illegal download does not a unique person. It's easy, yes? I can download the game twice or three times easily. Other people can do so, too. That's not to say that everybody pirates the game multiple times but it's enough to say that it's not 5000 different people that did the downloading.

There's also the consideration of needing multiple sources, bad downloads, etc. Well, maybe not "also," but clarification of reasons people might download multiple times.

It sounds like an invented statistic. Let's assume it's true for a second. It's a good thing they put all that DRM in, because it definitely doesn't annoy regular customers and definitely combats piracy effectively

And further, it sure is doing its job!

 

[unstabLized]

I am so afraid. Ubisoft owns some of my favourite franchises that I love. Anno, Assassin's Creed, and they're also making the game I'm looking forward to the most, Watch Dogs. I am so, so afraid that they will screw it up. Big time. Specially because I play on PC, even worse. Oh I weep...

 

[predatorpulse7]

Although I love the AssCreed series it has been shown time and time again that Ubisoft is run by morons when it comes to its PC customers. Always delaying games versus the console version(and still shipping them with problems - see multiplayer BSOD in Revelations after a few minutes for those with realtek sound cards), implementing bullshit DRM(that almost ruined AC2 - the best AC game), moaning about piracy rates but doing nothing to appease their customers etc.

Even recently, for AC3, they said that the controls won't probably work with a M+KB, even though I had no such problems in previous AC games(they worked fine with a M+KB). So they will make me buy a controller to play the game on my PC. Brilliant.

Ubisoft has no idea that it has to draw pirates to them(to make them customers), not bemoan the situation. There are other companies, that have pc releases, which managed to get pirated to high hell but they still have very good sales and most important, customer loyalty and maybe even respect. The Witcher 2 was very pirated but it sold 1,7 million units on pc alone and 4 million overall.
And CDProjekt has a f**kton more respect among gamers(even console gamers) than Ubisoft.

I know people that pirated TW2 and went and bought it 2 weeks later to do a second run. I personally gifted a TW2 game to a friend just to support CDProjekt even further.

I also know people that pirate Ubisoft product just to spite them, they don't even care about the games that much(so it's not a case of I really really wanted that game). Same with EA games.

 

[Valanthe]

Bwahahahahahahahaha!

Okay, now that that's out of my system, the explanation for my mirth, a rational human being, upon finding out, whether through actual research or just pulling numbers from their ass (We wouldn't want to accuse the poor company of possessing intelligence) that their sales were taking a 95% cut from piracy alone, would assume that their "Anti-Piracy" measures, like always on DRM, was clearly not performing as advertising, and a rational, sane human being would begin looking at that system to figure out how it could be improved.

But no, they look at the number and decide "screw it, we give up." to which I say, "Good F---ing riddance," I can only hope that Ubisoft's abysmal turn will serve as an example to -other- companies who seem to believe that they can force people to buy their games.

 

[platinawolf]

I was going to buy moar ubisoft games (they do make a few that are fun after all) but,,, If that's how they regard us, I'l just skip em, not like they have "amazing" games... Sides, I has AI-Wars by Arcen Games, the game that gets patched/expanded faster than you have time to finish a game ^^*.

 

[Vault101]

I like ubisofts games but this is bullshit..plain and simple, and so what? you have paying customers...don;t punish them for the greed of you or others