Ubisoft games - poster children for piracy?

[Slargos]

COULD the answer be that people aren't buying what Ubi is selling for the simple reason that it consists of boxed AIDS-infested feces?

[sbr]

COULD the answer be that people aren't buying what Ubi is selling for the simple reason that it consists of boxed AIDS-infested feces?

Yes that is very possible.  Do you always go to these lengths to justify your illegal behavior?

[Razgovory]

http://news.yahoo.com/asia-powers-pc-rebound-computer-gaming-industry-185502578.html

All these executives must be blithering idiots, and the projections crudely crafted lies, right?

Here's some quotes of my own.

We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that's the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy, to the degree [that PC gamers who] pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won't have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future.
http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2008/05/09/crytek-and-epic-lost-millions-because-of-piracy-and-are-now-switching-game-development-away-from-pc.htm

It's hard to second guess exactly what the reasons are. You can say piracy. You can say user migration, but the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles.
http://www.shacknews.com/article/54129/id-pc-worth-supporting-but

Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.
www.totalvideogames.com/Gears-of-War-2/feature-13270.html

...people are going to stop making [games] on the PC because of my earlier point, what's happened on the PC with piracy. The economics are ugly right now on the PC. You're not going to see these gigantic, epic investments of dollars on the PC when it just doesn't work. The economics have to work. You're going to see those investments made on the console side and it's going to become a more console-centric investment. And then you're going to see them ported back over to the PC and that creates a different experience on the PC.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/853/853275p1.html

On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online).... the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/01/pc-sales-slow-as-some-despair-over-piracy.ars

I would have thought Slargos and Berkut would be more sympathetic to people suffering from the free rider problem.  They ussually are politically.

[Razgovory]

I want to know how they got data for the future.  How much of that is due things like Facebook games or WoW?

I would expect it's a prediction based on known quantities and observations.

For instance, I know that next year you will still be a worthless, jobless spitfuck, and next year hasn't come around yet.

However, even as a worthless, jobless spitfuck I'll still be better then you.  I'll always be better then you Slargos.  You and I both know this.

[Warspite]

http://news.yahoo.com/asia-powers-pc-rebound-computer-gaming-industry-185502578.html

"I think this is a phenomenal time for the PC gaming industry," said Tan  Min-Liang, the Singaporean co-founder and chief executive of Razer,  which was founded in 1998 in San Diego, California.

Entertainment industry research firm DFC Intelligence  said in a market report released in September that the PC could  dethrone consoles as the dominant hardcore gaming platform in three  years.
Data from the firm showed that the global PC games market raked in a record $16.2 billion last year, up 20 percent from 2009.

All these executives must be blithering idiots, and the projections crudely crafted lies, right?

Your knock-out evidence consists of PR department soundbytes and projected sales figures?

[The Minsky Moment]

Would you please delineate the ways in which PC gaming is changing which are directly related to Piracy?

Pretty obvious isn't it?
First is the move to the subscription model and the massive growth of MMOs
Second is the release of intentionally incomplete releases followed by a blizzard of DLCs, expansions, etc.

[Razgovory]

The third is free to play micropayment games.  This may suit Slargos, I don't know.  I sorta miss some of the aspects of gaming ten years ago.

[Berkut]

Would you please delineate the ways in which PC gaming is changing which are directly related to Piracy?

Pretty obvious isn't it?

Not at all, actually.

First is the move to the subscription model and the massive growth of MMOs

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.

Second is the release of intentionally incomplete releases followed by a blizzard of DLCs, expansions, etc.

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

[Warspite]

Would you please delineate the ways in which PC gaming is changing which are directly related to Piracy?

Pretty obvious isn't it?

Not at all, actually.

First is the move to the subscription model and the massive growth of MMOs

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.

Second is the release of intentionally incomplete releases followed by a blizzard of DLCs, expansions, etc.

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

I don't see his point that way at all. Rather, the fact is that piracy has altered or defined the economic viability of various business models in gaming. The related point is that the feasibility of a product is to a great degree due to its quality as a means of entertainment (ie, how fun it is), but instead how resilient the product is to theft. WoW is fun for many people, but like all Blizzard games you are locked into a very strong anti-pirary system. Other games that have many millions of downloads, but illegal ones, are presumably still fun - but without that strong anti-piracy system, the developer and publisher are not realising that revenue from the consumption of their product.

THe other obvious trend is that fewer big gaming franchises are PC exclusive, on PC first, or on PC at all. Again, related to the relative profitability of PC vs console platforms.

In the very links Slargos posted you have developers quoted as saying the severely fine margins of profitability PC games work on is a big problem in the industry (and not helped at all by piracy).

[Neil]

Quite. After years of waving away the publishers' and developers' complaints and warnings, the free-gaming crowd are now getting their just deserts.

Unfortunately, those of us who pay for games are suffering too.

They are?  It seems to me that everyone is winning, except people who buy PC games with DRM.  The AAA publishers concentrate on the consoles and release most of their games for PC as an afterthought, netting them maybe another million or two in revenue.  The smaller publishers are pushed into niches where they can be interesting, creative and profitable, where the pirates don't go.  The pirates get to play their games for free.  The DRM companies make crazy profits out of the desperate AAAs.  Copyright lawyers get to ruin things and lobby Congress.

[Neil]

COULD the answer be that people aren't buying what Ubi is selling for the simple reason that it consists of boxed AIDS-infested feces?

Has Ubi released something that doesn't suck lately?  I can't think of something.

[Berkut]

That is all fine, but we are still left waiting for the evidence that piracy has anything more than a marginal effect on PC gaming.

Pointing out that PC gaming is dominated by MMOs, for example, does not suggest that piracy has damaged PC gaming - it just suggests that Blizzard hit the super-home run with WoW. Other MMOs are doing ok, but plenty fail.

PC gaming is doing ok, so even the argument that PC gaming is tanking, therefore piracy is why (which is fallacius even if the first part were true) fails.

I still have yet to see any actual evidence that anyone is losing significant revenue as a result of piracy.

I think what has driven the rise of console gaming is the latest generation of consoles being the first that can actually compete with PC technically at a level that makes their obvious advantages in price (for the consumer), portability, and ease of use telling. Piracy has very little, f anything, to do with those things, and piracy was as much an issue previous to those technical changes, so it seems obvious that it is not piracy which drives this.

[Iormlund]

Would you please delineate the ways in which PC gaming is changing which are directly related to Piracy?

Pretty obvious isn't it?
First is the move to the subscription model and the massive growth of MMOs
Second is the release of intentionally incomplete releases followed by a blizzard of DLCs, expansions, etc.

This might something of a shock but not only there are MMO pirate servers, there's also plenty of DLC crap for consoles as well.

Those two have nothing to do with pirates and all to do with widespread availability of high-speed Internet access.

[Neil]

Yeah, incomplete console games that have launch-day patches aren't exactly unheard of.  OK, they aren't quite Paradox-incomplete, but they definitely need more polish.

[Warspite]

That is all fine, but we are still left waiting for the evidence that piracy has anything more than a marginal effect on PC gaming.

Pointing out that PC gaming is dominated by MMOs, for example, does not suggest that piracy has damaged PC gaming - it just suggests that Blizzard hit the super-home run with WoW. Other MMOs are doing ok, but plenty fail.

PC gaming is doing ok, so even the argument that PC gaming is tanking, therefore piracy is why (which is fallacius even if the first part were true) fails.

I still have yet to see any actual evidence that anyone is losing significant revenue as a result of piracy.

THe article posted earlier detailed download figures for a selection of major games (and including some cheaply priced indie games). Given that to afford a high-power gaming rig to use such software, we may reasonably assume a minimum level of affluence that could afford the game, even if someone had to save up a bit. Therefore we may in turn reasonably conclude that piracy costs an amount of revenue.

I'm not saying PC gaming is dying, I'm saying piracy is having an effect, and not a good one.

As one example the article earlier gave, Crysis. Despite an advanced engine with great graphics and good reviews, it sold what, 10,000 units? Yet it was pirated many times this amount. I find it hard to believe that people able to afford rigs able to run Crysis and a broadband connection needed to download 4 gigs of data were all, to a man, so desperately poor as to be unable to pay for the game.

As for the effect, the developer announced that their next engine will not be for the PC. And in the article, someone from the company specifically says this is because of piracy.

I do think its funny that at least three people in this thread say it's all "nothing to do with piracy" when the developers themselves say yes, it is, in one of the very links provided earlier.