Ubisoft: PC Piracy Rate 93-95% [Aug 22, 2012, 09:26 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot gives GamesIndustry International his outlook on free-to-play games as a way of combating PC piracy, explaining the difficulties presented by serving an audience they perceive to be 93-95% thieves:
"We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it," said the French CEO. "The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn't previously - places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.
"It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content."
Beamer wrote on Aug 22, 2012, 12:02:spacecadet wrote on Aug 22, 2012, 12:01:
As someone who works in the gaming industry I have to say his numbers look about right. Once you start considering countries like China and Brazil the piracy rates shoot through the roof. The entire comment is about those countries, but everyone here takes it as an attack on western gamers, that is funny in so many ways.
Yeah, someone else mentioned that earlier, and you're right - as soon as you think China, Brazil and Russia it makes sense.
Can't say anything about China or Russia (except that in Soviet Russia games pirates you!), but here in Brazil Steam is quite popular (thanks F2P TF2). I'd say that about 55%-60% PC gamer here has Steam installed and from these at least 50% usually buys games (mostly during Steam promotions). So this gives us a number of *at least* 25% of the PC gamers as legitimate customers. I know I am not a typical example, but I paid for all my games - most of then I bought thru Steam during several promotions, usually paying $10-$20 each.
Date
Subject
Author
Copyright © 1996-2021 Stephen Heaslip. All rights reserved.
All trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
Privacy Policy. Manage Cookie Settings.
News CGI copyright © 1999-2021 James "furn" Furness & Blue's News. All rights reserved.
Chatbear v1.5.0/blue++: Page generated 8 March 2021, 07:19.