Ubisoft games - poster children for piracy?

[Razgovory]

My data is that games that are heavily pirated are heavily profitable, hence the claims that piracy makes it hard to make money so much so that people are not going to bother trying are spurious. Crysis was the most pirated game of 2008, yet exceeded it's developers expectations for sales. And torrents were certainly around in 2008.

At this point, it is pretty clear you aren't even trying to understand my point anymore though.

Does your data indicate all game that are heavily pirated are heavily profitable?  I mean, I can find examples of games that were heavily pirated but not heavily profitable.

[Josquius]

There's that too. The trouble with such things though is on popular games the pirates crack them too. I guess on less popular games it helps a bit though.

Pirates crack them? Do you have an example?

And no it doesn't "help a bit", it's the whole revenue model (much more so than advertising). Have a look at the "World of Tanks" thread. That's the future.

Go search pirate bay for say Witcher 2 DLC and you'll see it there.

[Razgovory]

I imagine it's harder to add cracked DLCs to a game then just having full version.  Cracks don't always work together well, and patching a cracked version of a game is difficult.

[Jacob]

Go search pirate bay for say Witcher 2 DLC and you'll see it there.

DLC is not the same as the freemium/ micro-transaction model.

[The Minsky Moment]

Funny, I thought the massive growth of MMOs was because they were fun and people wanted to play them. I had no idea that millions of people play WoW because it defeats pirates.

You keep confusing the producer's perspective from the consumer's perspective.  The question isn't why people play MMOs; the question is why other kinds of games that used to get made outside the paradigm don't get made anymore.  Example - bioware made its name making the Baldurs Gate-Neverwinter series; but for the last 8-9 yearfs it has focused entirely on multi-platform games where the console drives development (with the exception of its planned Star Wars MMO).

Ahh yes, that must be why you don't see DLC on consoles....oh wait.

Non sequitur.  Just because something has one purpose doesn't mean that is its only purpose.

[The Minsky Moment]

My data is that games that are heavily pirated are heavily profitable, hence the claims that piracy makes it hard to make money so much so that people are not going to bother trying are spurious. Crysis was the most pirated game of 2008, yet exceeded it's developers expectations for sales. And torrents were certainly around in 2008..

Sales is not the same as profits.

The business model of game development, like most IP-heavy productions, involves heavy investments up front before dollar one in revenue is made.  The business model also typically involves hit projects carrying the costs of the inevitable flops and disappointments.  The key element here is marginal sales, because its on those marginal sales that all the profit is made.  And of course it it those marginal sales - and hence profitability - that are most adversely impacted by piracy.

[Berkut]

My data is that games that are heavily pirated are heavily profitable, hence the claims that piracy makes it hard to make money so much so that people are not going to bother trying are spurious. Crysis was the most pirated game of 2008, yet exceeded it's developers expectations for sales. And torrents were certainly around in 2008..

Sales is not the same as profits.

The business model of game development, like most IP-heavy productions, involves heavy investments up front before dollar one in revenue is made.  The business model also typically involves hit projects carrying the costs of the inevitable flops and disappointments.  The key element here is marginal sales, because its on those marginal sales that all the profit is made.  And of course it it those marginal sales - and hence profitability - that are most adversely impacted by piracy.

Uhhh, the Crysis people expected to sell X copies of the game. Presumablly that number was great enough to make the game profitable for them, or they would never have done it to begin with.

Instead it sold > X copies, and is one of the best selling PC games of all time. No matter how you dice it, Crysis was successful by their own measures. The only reason they are complaining is that it was also successful at being the most pirated game of the year. I can understand why that pisses them off, it would piss me off as well if I were them.

Sales is not profits, but when it comes to software, it is in fact profits, since all the development costs are sunk. Once you make it, you ahve to sell X copies to turn a profit, then after that it is all gravy. I don't know how many Crysis needed to turn a profit, but since they built it and it sold more than they expected it to, clearly it did what they were hoping it would do, or at least it did what they expected it to...

[The Minsky Moment]

Ok B let's say I grant you Crysis made money for its developers back in 08 notwithstanding rampant piracy.

That is a sample size of one game made 4 years ago and it doesn't deal with the general nature of the problem.

[The Minsky Moment]

Skyrim

An interesting example - as the vast majority of sales in units and dollars to date are on console, the game was designed specifically for console, and based on what I have heard, the PC version is gimped as a result.

[Berkut]

Ok B let's say I grant you Crysis made money for its developers back in 08 notwithstanding rampant piracy.

That is a sample size of one game made 4 years ago and it doesn't deal with the general nature of the problem.

Granted, but I think it serves as a pretty good example, especially considering that its lead designer guy bithched and moaned about how they got screwed by pirates on it - it illustrates nicely how silly the argument that a lot of piracy MUST somehow result in so much lost sales that it is better to just get out of the market.

What DOES deal with the general nature of the problem though? There is no real data available out there, nothing that clearly suggests that PC piracy reduces profits to an extent that is significant when it comes to driving developers out of the PC market. I think that fact that piracy has always been around, and yet it didn't stop anyone before suggests that piracy is loudly complained about, but apparently isn't really that important.

The counter argument to that is to claim "Yeah, but piracy is so much worse now, because of the internets!". Well, the internets were around when Hlaf Life 2 was selling 12 million copies. And for the last 25 years we've heard about how piracy was on the verge of destroying the PC market NOW, not that it might if there is some technological advancement that allows it to do so - so I am skeptical.

Finally, if it is piracy driving develpers away from the PC....why are they still writing or porting for the PC at all? If piracy is so bad that money cannot be made on the PC, then developers would abandon it altogether, not just develop for some other platform and port it where it makes sense. Huge games like MW3 simply would not around for the PC at all.

But what do we actually see? Lots of copies sold, albeit not as many as before, even while there is a huge amount of piracy as well.

Like I said earlier though - from my perspective it doesn't matter. I think the PC gaming market is where it is at due to factors that have little to do with piracy, and those factors will continue to marginalize the PC as a market dominating factor, while at the same time keeping the PC around as a desirable secondary platform for those titles that just work better on a PC (MMOs) and of course to tap a huge overall market (some 1 billion PCs in existance even if most of those are not gaming).

[Berkut]

Skyrim

An interesting example - as the vast majority of sales in units and dollars to date are on console, the game was designed specifically for console, and based on what I have heard, the PC version is gimped as a result.

Yes, there is no question the consoles are where the real money is at these days.

But there is still lots of money to be made on the PC, despite the claims that piracy is what is driving developers away from the PC. I think if it was primarily piracy (instead of just going where the dollars are, which is the console crowd of teens and 20 somethings), then you would not see Skyrim on the PC at all. Why would you - if you cannot make money on the PC due to piracy, why port it?

The reality is that you CAN make money on the PC, and in fact you can make just as much now as ever, since the PC gaming market in absolute terms is still as large as it has ever been. There is just MORE money to be made on consoles. If that is the reality, then what we see today makes prefect sense: Major titles developed for consoles, with ports to the PC to capture that lucrative market, even if it isn't the focus anymore.

[Razgovory]

Okay, here's another example for Berkut.

Update: For 2009, the most pirated PC game as reported in this article was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The PC version had a staggering 4.1 million downloads via torrents alone compared with an estimated 200,000 - 300,000 actual sales via retail and Steam, demonstrating that the most popular game of 2009 was also the most pirated, and more importantly, that the actual number of downloads for the most popular game is now almost three times as high as in 2008, signalling the rampant growth of piracy. It is also interesting to note that while COD:MW2 sold around 300,000 copies on PC and had 4.1 million pirated downloads, the console version sold in excess of 6 million copies during the same period according to this article, and yet had a fraction of the number of pirated downloads at around 970,000.

From the article I posted on the first page.

So clearly the problem is not hardware on the PC, or lack of players.  Naturally 4.1 million downloads is only one form of piracy.  There are P2P site and programs as well.  Still this fraction of piracy is a good indicator of how widespread it is.  If as someone here previous said only 1/4th of those who pirated the game would have bought it that's still 1 million copies.  Triple the number the number sold on PC.

[garbon]

The counter argument to that is to claim "Yeah, but piracy is so much worse now, because of the internets!". Well, the internets were around when Hlaf Life 2 was selling 12 million copies. And for the last 25 years we've heard about how piracy was on the verge of destroying the PC market NOW, not that it might if there is some technological advancement that allows it to do so - so I am skeptical.

Well one argument is that the internet has gotten more users in the past 4 years...although 2008 also saw Spore which required internet activation and that wasn't seen as unduly burdensome to even casual players.

[MadBurgerMaker]

I thought it was interesting that there were pirated copies of Skyrim for the 360 out and being played about a week before the release of the game, while the PC version was pretty well locked down.  I assume because of the Steam release date thing.

It's really quite easy to pirate games on consoles.  There's an extra step involved at first, usually to "unlock" the hardware, but then it's a matter of burning a DVD (or BluRay) and shoving the disk in there.  I did it with my first Xbox, not the 360, the old one:  modded it, put a new hard drive in there, got a subscription to GameFly.    I just copied them to the HDD instead of burning a bunch of disks.

[Josquius]

Go search pirate bay for say Witcher 2 DLC and you'll see it there.

DLC is not the same as the freemium/ micro-transaction model.

What do you mean then?
Like farmville and such crap?