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

[Wilian]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/07/op...ath-of-reason/

It really has some nice insight to the whole situation at the moment. A small snippet:

However, Ubisoft provides a test-case. We are almost two years into its aggressive attack on PC piracy. Recently, Ubisoft called its “always-on” DRM a success, claiming “a clear reduction in piracy.”

In terms of actual sales, however, the results seem decidedly mixed. Michael Pachter told Eurogamer that Ubisoft’s “PC game sales are down 90% without a corresponding lift in console sales.”

Pachter framed the problem in terms of piracy, as I’m sure Ubisoft frames the problem, but a 90% decline in PC sales is a catastrophic number. If piracy were the problem, then their “successful” DRM policy should have prevented such a free-fall.

Instead, PC gamers have stopped buying Ubisoft games. In fact, the decline of sales even calls into question the decline in piracy rates. All we know for sure is that Ubisoft have stopped people from playing their games. Full stop.

From my perspective, DRM is an insult towards a paying customer in same manner how if I buy a movie it has unskippable parts telling me how piracy is wrong. Now it seems that PC gamers are finally voting with their wallets but the only response seems to be "LOL ITS BECAUSE OF PIRACY" derp again.

[Rixis]

i heard the world was in financial trouble, and people weren't spending as much, but i'm sure piracy must be to blame

(oh, and maybe the games were shit too?)

[Build]

I agree with the article. Lately I have been rather pissed with steam, due to the fact when my ISP does line work or what not, I lose my internet for 6-8 hours at a time. 90% of steam games won't even load with out the internet.

That is slightly different than the game downloading the next level as you progress, but essentially produces the same problem. With out a internet connection you can not play your game. I attached my Fallout 3, and New Vegas to steam, and now I wish I hadn't.

[Deleted]

sorry but DRM is never going to be able to counter the Piracy issue, game company's, like movie companiess should realize that people will copy the games and put them up on the internet. there wont ever be a solution to this until we start living in a utopian dream world where everything is free.
there will always be some group that gets round the security, may take a few hours, may take a few days, but they will by pass it.

I agree with the article. Lately I have been rather pissed with steam, due to the fact when my ISP does line work or what not, I lose my internet for 6-8 hours at a time. 90% of steam games won't even load with out the internet.

That is slightly different than the game downloading the next level as you progress, but essentially produces the same problem. With out a internet connection you can not play your game. I attached my Fallout 3, and New Vegas to steam, and now I wish I hadn't.

I understand what you mean about single player games not working when your not connected to the net, it is for this reason I have a second copy of any of my steam titles installed and "cracked" so I can play without having to connect to the net or on my laptop when I am travailing.

[Deleted]

I actually pirate Ubisoft games to get around their DRM.

[Build]

I understand what you mean about single player games not working when your not connected to the net, it is for this reason I have a second copy of any of my steam titles installed and "cracked" so I can play without having to connect to the net or on my laptop when I am travailing.

You Sir, are a genius. I should look into that. Could you PM me a way to do that with my steam games? I imagine it has something to do with copying the game, then doing something to the copy.

[Racia]

All i can say is, i dont remember any good ubisoft games as of late.. got to add here that i never download games since its just too much of a hassle and i end up never playing it anyway, i buy my games and cant remember last time i bought a ubisoft game.

[Edge-]

There was a developer (can't remember who unfortunately) talking about the problem of DRM and why everyone hates it. Personally he hated it as well and thought that it was a horrible "solution" to combat piracy. Instead, he wants developers to come up with compelling reasons for people to purchase the game, and actually use the codes that come with it to register it with the company (interesting/fun rewards ect.). Rather than punish players with an extremely annoying system, reward them.

[Spaceshaman]

The article is about the Driver game. Well even the original Driver in 99 was a shitty game. Srsly, what did they expect?

[Wilian]

There was a developer (can't remember who unfortunately) talking about the problem of DRM and why everyone hates it. Personally he hated it as well and thought that it was a horrible "solution" to combat piracy. Instead, he wants developers to come up with compelling reasons for people to purchase the game, and actually use the codes that come with it to register it with the company (interesting/fun rewards ect.). Rather than punish players with an extremely annoying system, reward them.

I know Gabe Newell was one of the people speaking about DRM in such way, saying something along line that "developers/studios should make such games that it'd make people feel they want to buy them and own them, instead of focusing to the DRM scheme" which is kinda funny as Steam is one huge piece of DRM in itself. :P

---------- Post added 2011-10-09 at 06:06 PM ----------

The article is about the Driver game. Well even the original Driver in 99 was a shitty game. Srsly, what did they expect?

Driver 1 and 2 were excellent driving games, dunno what you're smoking. :O

And the article isn't about Driver game, it's just an example of bad PC port they give up as it's a very recent game.

[Deleted]

i heard the world was in financial trouble, and people weren't spending as much, but i'm sure piracy must be to blame

(oh, and maybe the games were shit too?)

People are known to consume more movies during recessions (escapism) and I assume the same applies to video-games. Considering how cheap they are in regards to hours/dollar I don't think the economic situation has any impact on games sales.

But I find it hard to believe that Ubisoft sales are down 90%. That's a stark fall. Then again, what great franchises do they have outside of Assassins Creed?

[Pappahealar]

Produce a good game. Implement a multiplayer mode that is enjoyable and that will keep people playing for a while at least.
Then people will buy the game.

Assassin's creed is a series I love, however I have not bought any of them. There are several reasons for that.
I will be honest, I am still young and don't have too much money so pirating is convenient. So it is a big reason sure. But to be fair, as my income increased I find myself buying good games rather than downloading them.
The second reason is. A game like Assassin's creed is over in 15 hours game time. That is 3 days of gaming for me after a new game really. It has no replay value what so ever.
The multiplayer mode that came with the third game is a action in the right direction, however the multiplayer is shit.

Most people that pirate is young, and that is because they can't afford the games. Even a kid with good economy can't keep buying games and consoles and still have some money over for other stuff. Even less can kids buy new computers every 2nd year to play games in good graphics/smooth fps if they have to buy games all the time. That is just how it's gonna be. However, if you want to sell games, make sure they are good really. Make good games and people will buy them.

Multiplayer and online play is a BIG reason games are good. So to implement a good multiplayer is a good decision. However some games, like bioshock are just meant to be played singleplayer so don't ruin such games with multiplayer.
WoW is successful for a couple of reasons. But I'd say the biggest three reasons are: It's a very good game, It is multiplayer with alot of replay value, it is cheap(considering the entertainment given).
Ubisoft just makes so much hassle to reduce piracy that the quality of their games are crumbling. I don't know another good game other than Assassin's Creed from Ubisoft, I suppose there is a reason for that.

Entertainment industries are so closeminded really. I will just start of and say that I am 19 years old, so I am very well in the range of people that pirate. And I do quite a lot as well. But there are some very good new things that have popped up that made me pirate less. The number one company that made me pirate less is: Spotify.
Two years ago I got Spotify, and my pirating of music stopped by 95%. I could get all my music in one place. I could very very easily access it at my friends place without having a 250Gb external harddrive or something stupid like that. I could easily sync my music to my phone instead of loading over music once every third days when I got a new song. It took only 3 months before I decided to subscribe to Spotify Premium, because they were very well damned worth getting my money.

Another company that made me pirate less, maybe not by much but still, is: Steam.
To gather all my games in the same location without a heap of game covers being produced is really really good. Make buying games easy and convenient sure increases the chance of me buying them. Portal 2 is a game I could've very well pirated even easier than went and buy it. But because of it being easy to download games on steam and keep them there made me want to buy the game rather than pirate it. Because Valve is really worth my money for how well done their games are. I enjoyed Portal 1 so immensely that not buying Portal 2 was out of the question.

I think the upcoming "OnLive" will be very very very, extremely succesful because it will be so convenient and will make you able to play wherever without the need of your computer and the game installed where you are. If they manage correctly they could alone wipe out most of pirating of games. Just because the convenience of using their service.

The last entertainment business however, movies. Has failed quite hard at getting me to buy the movies rather than pirate them, I suppose Netflix in the US is convenient. But that doesn't exist in Europe so pirating is still more convenient. And there is so many good torrent sites that upload new as well as old movies. So you don't need to look for movies, they come to you on such sites.


As a summary I would say that companies should NOT do what Ubisoft does. They should instead embrace pirating and look into why people do pirate games. They are so snowed in on it being because of it being free that they don't see the other big reasons why pirating is so much more convenient currently.
Spotify did this and is super successful. They saw that people want to have easy access to all their music, they fixed it. They did it to a quite low subscription fee. And they succeeded more than well.
Steam saw that gamers wanted their games in the same location and give them easy access to buy the games. Today they are the biggest online company for buying games/no source on that, just what I think).

OnLive as I mentioned before will most likely be extremely successful since they will make games so easily accessible. If they can make the service lag-free, get most new games on their platform when they are released, as well as a low price on the subscription fee. Then they will be very successful and most likely the platform which people will turn towards when buying games in the future.

If someone would create something similar to Spotify for videos that would been cheap, easily accessible on every computer just by logging in to a account as well as mobile devices. Have a lot of free content(movies dated before let's say 1990), then for example two levels of subscriptions. One for movies up to 10 years old(2001 this year and 2002 next year etc.) And one for every movie. Keep the subscription prices at good levels and I believe also such a service would reduce pirating.

Edit: Holy shit. That was a bigger wall of text than I originally thought it would be o.O

[Deleted]

First of, piracy doesn't cost developers and publishers nearly as much as the used games market does. That is why more and more games involve Steam (and EA want to involve Origin) activation, as one activation (and thus one game) can only be active on one account, and one account usually stays with one person. Anyway, to get a bite into piracy...

One solution to piracy without using DRM or as EA blatant spyware that could work for many games is this: No legitimate serial key: No community interaction, no patches, no mods, no multiplayer.

Take a look at Paradox Interactive (no not those guys who made the new Conan movie), who publishes games like Magicka and Mount and Blade and makes games such as Hearts of Iron. To join the forum community (which is big) you need your serial. They haven't begun taking serious steps towards piracy yet (I don't think they bother yet), but one thing they could do would be to limit the modding sections of the forums to people who have registered the game. Tech support for example is cut off from you if you haven't. They could make it so that you need to register your game to get patches - afaik you don't atm, never had to try as I buy all my games from them - and that would be a huge incentive to pay for those titles if you really want them. Don't want patches or mods? Well, then you probably never wanted Paradox's games anyway (they can be very buggy on release).

Now, that wouldn't prevent someone who has paid for the game to redistribute patches and mods to pirates, but getting around that is nigh impossible.

Think about it. Would you be equally interested in pirating say Skyrim if you knew beforehand that you couldn't get patches or mods? I know I wouldn't. Would you be equally interested in pirating any moddable game if you knew you couldn't get those mods?

Obviously all games don't offer mod support - actually far from all - but those who do could take this route. People want to mod their games, people want to play good mods made by and for the community. Sane developers want to nurture a modding community (if they have the time for it) as they increase the longevity for their game, which in turn allows them to create and sell DLC and expansions for said game for a longer time span before moving to their next title.

But then the question arises - what about games that for various reasons don't have modding support (or otherwise have no need for such)? In that case, and probably in general as well, Extra Credits' episode on EA's "Project Ten Dollars" has some interesting ideas that could (or could not) work out.

[Vordie]

Produce a good game. Implement a multiplayer mode that is enjoyable and that will keep people playing for a while at least.
Then people will buy the game.

Assassin's creed is a series I love, however I have not bought any of them. There are several reasons for that.
I will be honest, I am still young and don't have too much money so pirating is convenient. So it is a big reason sure. But to be fair, as my income increased I find myself buying good games rather than downloading them.
The second reason is. A game like Assassin's creed is over in 15 hours game time. That is 3 days of gaming for me after a new game really. It has no replay value what so ever.
The multiplayer mode that came with the third game is a action in the right direction, however the multiplayer is shit.

Most people that pirate is young, and that is because they can't afford the games. Even a kid with good economy can't keep buying games and consoles and still have some money over for other stuff. Even less can kids buy new computers every 2nd year to play games in good graphics/smooth fps if they have to buy games all the time. That is just how it's gonna be. However, if you want to sell games, make sure they are good really. Make good games and people will buy them.

Multiplayer and online play is a BIG reason games are good. So to implement a good multiplayer is a good decision. However some games, like bioshock are just meant to be played singleplayer so don't ruin such games with multiplayer.
WoW is successful for a couple of reasons. But I'd say the biggest three reasons are: It's a very good game, It is multiplayer with alot of replay value, it is cheap(considering the entertainment given).
Ubisoft just makes so much hassle to reduce piracy that the quality of their games are crumbling. I don't know another good game other than Assassin's Creed from Ubisoft, I suppose there is a reason for that.

Entertainment industries are so closeminded really. I will just start of and say that I am 19 years old, so I am very well in the range of people that pirate. And I do quite a lot as well. But there are some very good new things that have popped up that made me pirate less. The number one company that made me pirate less is: Spotify.
Two years ago I got Spotify, and my pirating of music stopped by 95%. I could get all my music in one place. I could very very easily access it at my friends place without having a 250Gb external harddrive or something stupid like that. I could easily sync my music to my phone instead of loading over music once every third days when I got a new song. It took only 3 months before I decided to subscribe to Spotify Premium, because they were very well damned worth getting my money.

Another company that made me pirate less, maybe not by much but still, is: Steam.
To gather all my games in the same location without a heap of game covers being produced is really really good. Make buying games easy and convenient sure increases the chance of me buying them. Portal 2 is a game I could've very well pirated even easier than went and buy it. But because of it being easy to download games on steam and keep them there made me want to buy the game rather than pirate it. Because Valve is really worth my money for how well done their games are. I enjoyed Portal 1 so immensely that not buying Portal 2 was out of the question.

I think the upcoming "OnLive" will be very very very, extremely succesful because it will be so convenient and will make you able to play wherever without the need of your computer and the game installed where you are. If they manage correctly they could alone wipe out most of pirating of games. Just because the convenience of using their service.

The last entertainment business however, movies. Has failed quite hard at getting me to buy the movies rather than pirate them, I suppose Netflix in the US is convenient. But that doesn't exist in Europe so pirating is still more convenient. And there is so many good torrent sites that upload new as well as old movies. So you don't need to look for movies, they come to you on such sites.


As a summary I would say that companies should NOT do what Ubisoft does. They should instead embrace pirating and look into why people do pirate games. They are so snowed in on it being because of it being free that they don't see the other big reasons why pirating is so much more convenient currently.
Spotify did this and is super successful. They saw that people want to have easy access to all their music, they fixed it. They did it to a quite low subscription fee. And they succeeded more than well.
Steam saw that gamers wanted their games in the same location and give them easy access to buy the games. Today they are the biggest online company for buying games/no source on that, just what I think).

OnLive as I mentioned before will most likely be extremely successful since they will make games so easily accessible. If they can make the service lag-free, get most new games on their platform when they are released, as well as a low price on the subscription fee. Then they will be very successful and most likely the platform which people will turn towards when buying games in the future.

If someone would create something similar to Spotify for videos that would been cheap, easily accessible on every computer just by logging in to a account as well as mobile devices. Have a lot of free content(movies dated before let's say 1990), then for example two levels of subscriptions. One for movies up to 10 years old(2001 this year and 2002 next year etc.) And one for every movie. Keep the subscription prices at good levels and I believe also such a service would reduce pirating.

Edit: Holy shit. That was a bigger wall of text than I originally thought it would be o.O

I didn't read your whole post, but the first 2 lines sums up what I believe is the way to success.

Pirate Single Player. Like it, cause it's a good game. Buy it, cause of Multiplayer. Profit!

[Deleted]

Think about it. Would you be equally interested in pirating say Skyrim if you knew beforehand that you couldn't get patches or mods? I know I wouldn't. Would you be equally interested in pirating any moddable game if you knew you couldn't get those mods?

Obviously all games don't offer mod support - actually far from all - but those who do could take this route. People want to mod their games, people want to play good mods made by and for the community. Sane developers want to nurture a modding community (if they have the time for it) as they increase the longevity for their game, which in turn allows them to create and sell DLC and expansions for said game for a longer time span before moving to their next title.

But then the question arises - what about games that for various reasons don't have modding support (or otherwise have no need for such)? In that case, and probably in general as well, Extra Credits' episode on EA's "Project Ten Dollars" has some interesting ideas that could (or could not) work out.

urm, what do patches and mods have to do with piracy? there are more scene groups working on cracks and pirated games than people working on the DRM to stop them, so i'm not quite sure where you point comes from. patches and mods will just be readily available through these groups as well, so nothing will change.

the only way to stop piracy is to create more compelling multiplayer games which aren't reused drivel and actually bring something exciting into the mix. think about BF3 for example. how many people will be buying that compared to those pirating? a load more. why? because the multiplayer is bloody awesome. a lot of people, myself included, feel cheated and ripped off with buying a game for £30 which only has 10-20 hours of single player, compared to a game that also costs £30 but can provide an unlimited amount of fun through exciting and engaging multiplayer.

[Llunai]

PC game sales are down 90% without a corresponding lift in console sales.

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.

[Noomz]

lol at thinking DRM is the way to fix piracy.

The way to fix piracy is not making terrible games no-one wants to spend 49 Euros on.

Steam is a great service to be honest. The industry needs to change to a changing demand and changing wishes of customers.
They put more energy into consoles, thusly the PC versions of their games are usually nothing but ports. PC gamers feel abandoned and ignored, they don't feel the games being made are worth the money they cost and time and time again we're proven right with terrible ports that glitch, have bad controls etc.

No, the industry abandoned the PC and lacks completely in originality and fresh ideas and wants nothing more then to blame piracy for them shooting themselves in their feet.

[Tremelizzer]

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.

Did you even read the article? They mean that the DRM and/or other reasons have caused sales to drop, not piracy. Also it's only the PC sales and I bet the console sales are still high enough so they aren't going bankrupt anytime soon. There are potential sales but because of the DRM anybody who doesn't voluntarily want to have a headache because of it isn't going to buy their game but just pirate it or not play at all.

[Deleted]

I pirate stuff all the time, but if I like it, I buy it, if I don't I delete it.

PC game sales are down 90% without a corresponding lift in console sales.

But let's say I didn't. With the current financial situation, if I had to choose buy a game or pay the bills and feed family, I know which one I'd choose.

[wombinator04]

Ubisoft Is losing customers due to their retarded DRM system they put In like all of their games. In fact, putting In DRM just makes people want to pirate your games. Companies do harm to themselves by putting In these stupid DRM systems.

There's quite a bit of honest people In the world, (I wish there was more) but people hate It when companies screw over honest people just so they can save like $5000.