Interesting article about PC piracy, DRM and the outcome with Ubisoft

[reckoner04]

I thought I'd buy Crysis 2 because I quite enjoyed Crysis 1. When I heard that there's some horrible DRM included, I decided not to buy it (I also didn't end up pirating it - I simply didn't play it at all). And after I learned that Crysis Warhead had some dumb version of SecuROM on it, I instantly uninstalled it and tried to remove any trace it might have left on my computer (which was very new at that time).

Fun fact: I never bought any Crysis game -- my brother did, and I got to play it too since it isn't attached to, ie., a Steam account.

[Hoddie]

I personally never buy a game without playing it first, and this has been my philosophy right from owning a Spectrum in the 80s. I usually rely on magazine cover CDs (I remember when these were cassettes!) for game demos, but will occasionally download a game to try it out if all other avenues have failed. I have probably paid for over 300 games over the last 30 years but had the piracy option not been there that figure would probably be down by a third at least. Never ever rely on the rating given to a game by a games magazine, they're all receiving kick backs and other incentives to get people to go out and by particular games.

My favourite games were ones I played on my brother's Amiga, including Mega-lo-mania, Powermonger, Settlers, Populous, Super Cars II, etc, and the first time I played them they were all copies. When I bought my own Amiga 1200 I went out and bought every one of these - it would have been trivial to just copy his copies but I enjoyed them that much I just thought it was right to support further development of that type of game. In my opinion piracy was much more prevelant back in the Amiga and ST days - I had mates that had thousands of copied games. My mate's dad used to go to a meet every Wednesday night where people would swap the latest copies. It was normal. People used to buy 3.5" floppies in batches of 100 because they went through tonnes of them every month.

When I 'upgraded' to a PC (not really an upgrade for a gamer at the time), I went and bought all the games I'd known and loved on the Amiga that were available for the PC. Then the copies of Command & Conquer began circulating at work, gave it a go and ended up buying 3 or 4 titles in that range before it went downhill. That's £100+ they wouldn't have seen had I not played a copy initially. Same for Baldur's Gate II - a game I wouldn't have bought based on magazine recommendation, but having played it at a mate's house I knew I had to have it. From there I bought all the others in that series.

The only game I've ever bought based on a developer's pedigree was Lords of Chaos on the Spectrum. I loved Julian Gallop's 'Chaos' and played it endlessly for months on end, and when LoC was announced I knew I just had to buy it. Didn't regret it one bit.

The bottom line is that, in my case at least, piracy actually works in favour of the good developers. If I had to lay out €40-50 on a game before I knew if I'd like it, it'd never leave the shop shelf.

And about DRM - the moment they introduced that into the Settlers series, that was the moment I stopped playing them.

[Ultion]

A game that springs to mind is Battlefield 3, that uses Origin (/vomit) and launchs from a browser, Im surprised you dont have to make a blood sacrifice and do a dance to get the game working. Of course Diablo 3 is another example with the must be online to play...

[OrcsRLame]

This is pure BS. If this were true, Ubisoft would be bankrupt almost overnight. Piracy has been around for years, so acting like piracy has suddenly caused sales to drop is ridiculous. If anything, the market penetration and ubiquitous nature of PC's these days means that there is a much larger potential installation base than at any other point in gaming history. Potential sales are higher than ever.

Consoles make up a WAY bigger portion of the market than PCs. They could lose 100% of their PC sales and it wouldn't do anything significant to their company. They would be slightly annoyed about lost profits though.

[Ravenblade]

Ubisoft is playing the PR card with statements like that but I am pretty sure that they are selectively disabling the DRM and replacing it with one-time-activations on their upcoming PC-only titles anything else would be pretty self-destructive. They are very well aware of their self-deserved boycot behaviour from potential customers otherwise they would not do it - but it's the PR department's job to make a living from denial and sugar-coating. What happened is exactly what has been foretold countless of times, you fry the small fishes while the bigger ones notoriously escape you.
The more complex a copy-protection system, the more attractive it becomes for serious pirates (or say renegades in terms of motivations) to get a hold on it and provide tools to disable it. Because in this scene that is far more rewarding for your reputation to do that than providing a simple key generator.

[Deleted]

I grew up got a job and cano now afford to buy games.
NO need for piracy for me anymore

[Wilian]

I grew up got a job and cano now afford to buy games.
NO need for piracy for me anymore

Swoosh.

It was the point, flying past you.

[Uwibami]

The thing I don't understand is, if you want to avoid piracy, why not lower the price of your game?
Makes the game more accessible, meaning there's a good chance more will buy it.

Though that's just how I think it'd go.

[Wilian]

Publishers should start to think how low price sales affect their high priced initial sales aswell really, compared to piratism. A lot of people don't buy the games for the launch price anymore because they know it most likely will come out with some sort of 5-15e deal in next few months somewhere.

It's very easy to trump that on piracy but when people know they get it cheaper and quite soon too nowdays, they rather wait.