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Ubisoft's CEO Breaks Down Piracy By Platform; New Tool Will 'Tremendously' Decrease PC Piracy

by Nick Breckon and Chris Faylor, Jul 28, 2009 7:02pm PDT
Related Topics – xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Ubisoft, PSP, PC, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Piracy

During yesterday's Ubisoft earnings call, company CEO Yves Guillemot outlined his thoughts on piracy as it pertains to each platform, from PC to handhelds.

Interestingly, Guillemot was especially concerned with Nintendo DS piracy in Europe. And in a surprisingly mysterious comment, the CEO said that a "new tool" possibly coming by the end of this year would "tremendously" reduce the effects of PC piracy.

We've broken Guillemot's comments into quotes on each platform, providing a view of the anti-piracy effort from the top of one of gaming's larger publishers:

On the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3: "What we see is that it's very small on PS3. It's actually also good on the 360 because it's very difficult to pirate when you play the games with your machine online regularly--[Xbox 360 piracy is] a difficult thing to do because the risk is quite high."

On the PC: "All together, on home consoles, the piracy is low. But on the PC, the piracy increases quite a lot, and we are working on tools that will allow us to actually decrease tremendously the piracy on PC, starting next year in fact and probably one game at the end of this year."

On the Wii: "We see some piracy in some countries, but it's still small."

On the Nintendo DS: "What we are seeing in Europe, especially on the DS, is that the piracy is strong. We are working to put new figurines and new elements in the box that will change that for the future."

On the Nintendo DSi: "For the DSi, the piracy is a lot less than on the normal DS...[Piracy] is more affecting the DS than the DSi at the moment."

On the PSP: "It has always been a machine with lots of piracy. It's a machine we were not developing too much on...there are new ways to control piracy [on PSP] so we have reinvested on the machine."

On the difference between US and European piracy: "The DS is affected a lot more [in Europe] then the US, and the US we don't see the penetration...we expect a lower impact [on the DS] in the US than in Europe. It's more also the continent-side of Europe that is affected than total Europe."

"We see a different attitude towards piracy in the US than in Europe. We made a survey that is telling us that in the US, our consumers will be more willing to buy product than to pirate them.

That's a major difference."


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48 Threads* | 493 Comments
  • #473
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    By: levente@speakeasy.net x
    Reply
    No, you loser: YOU CANNOT FIGHT PIRACY AS LONG AS YOU TREAT US LIKE CRIMINALS - abhorrent and intrusive DRMs pushed a lot of people I know into not buying anything and pirating a few games they wanted to at least try. Some have waited until these disgusting DRMs were removed, some were like me, waited until it showed up on Steam without the illegal SecuROm but lot of other simply downloaded a cracked copy, played with it few times and then deleted it, saying they won't wait until it comes out on Steam (some never shows up there) or until they remove these illegal DRMs so they can re-sell it once they're done with it.
    It's a fact regardless what these stupid empty suits try to sell publicly, only idiots think they can stop piracy with even stronger DRMs or any activation methods.
    Jul 30, 2009 8:32am PDT
  • #144
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    By: dirtypunk x
    Reply
    I think publishers need to get their priorities straight. Instead of trying to stop piracy, they need to stop putting off the paying customers (their meal ticket), who will just not buy their broken games.

    As someone who buys all my PC games and as a software developer (who's worked in the games industry), the quality of actual software released these days is horrible. Back in the old DOS days, which was actually a *harder* platform to develop for in many ways (where you often fell back to assembly to get things done), I can remember if you bought a game, it usually worked - apart from Wing Commander 2, which had insane EMS memory requirements.

    Compare that to this year when I installed, say Empire: Total War. It was a great game that was essentially unplayable for a few months after I bought it. Not just because of the combat and interface bugs, but because it crashed all the damn time and had massive visual glitch ups. It isn't even the first experience like that I've had. It wasn't just me either, lots of people had these problems. Putting out software that buggy is unacceptable in other industries and it should be the case for games.

    The game sold well, but I will not buy another Total War game until it has been out for a good 6 months (if I do at all). If it wasn't a series that I had so much respect for, I'd never buy a game from the developer again.

    In the past all the DRM tools have done is make this worse, especially ones that the publishers have forced on the developer at the last minute. Anyone who's played certain RPG games knows what I'm talking about. If they can get in DRM without compromising quality (or my PC), I don't care about it. But really, money would be better spent on making sure the game actually works.

    Jul 29, 2009 12:14am PDT

    Thread Truncated. Click to see all 3 replies.

  • #307
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    By: matrixneo42 x
    Reply
    Some people pirate stuff because all they could afford was the pc and maybe not even that (perhaps it's their family computer or something). So, they go out, find a way to download the game, play it, perhaps even add to the community with their own mods, or on forums, and another player on the servers filling out an empty slot that might not have been there. Then, later on, when they can afford the sequel or something else from that developer, they might just end up buying it. Also, if they can't pirate your game, they never get hooked on the series and find something else to pirate (perhaps even older stuff).

    Just a point. Piracy isn't all bad. It's also probably impossible to stop 100%. All the old school stuff that's been pirated, for example, is probably always going to be around on some torrent. Even if piracy gets 100% complete foolproof on new stuff, it could be a bad idea, especially if people don't get other options for that game. Which is why I think you should always have a free (with limitations) version of your game. Get people hooked and let them pay for content in pieces perhaps. And, the total price for the "full" all pieces version should definitely be cheaper than it is now if piracy is nuked.

    And, yes, even if you killed torrents, piracy would still exist. File sharing or not, people always find a way. People will old school mail if they have to.

    I don't bother with piracy anymore myself. I do like voting with my money per se. Though I do use gamefly because 3 out of 5 games tend to be not worth buying anyhow (depends on your selection of course).
    Jul 29, 2009 8:27am PDT
  • #210
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    By: frdranger x
    Reply
    Why oh why is this discussion still going on? It doesn't matter what anyone in the industry does; there will ALWAYS, and I repeat ALWAYS be piracy abroad. There are tons of people who simply do not want to pay to play their games anymore.

    I personally have bought every single game I own to date. Both of my local EBGames stores stopped selling PC Games (well, displaying them. They keep them behind the counter now). I just foresee the PC Game industry falling and tumbling. But something (I don't know what) will bring it and bounce it back up again down the road, but it won't be anytime soon.
    Jul 29, 2009 5:45am PDT
  • #164
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    By: Tauru x
    Reply
    The core of the problem seems to be that to offset the costs of a huge dev and art team, you need to make sure that you sell as many copies as possible when you get to market. This would differ, of course, to the IPhone app model of development, where say, one or two developers toil for a few months to make something useful, novel, short, and sweet.

    A lot of arguments to this business model would be that the quality of the games would suffer greatly, but I think the truth is that I and many people get just as many hours of enjoyment from the $10 - $20 indie and mod purchases on steam than the $60 GOTY hypes that are released twice a year.

    If you only sink time into a project, then Piracy doesn't really matter. You're still making money, and not recouping losses. If you paid a team of 30 to make a game and are expecting your profits to offset your losses, then that's a risk. Piracy or no piracy, your game can tank. I don't agree with it, because it's stealing. I pay for all my games. But I remember when I was a student and I couldn't afford the latest Romp. It didn't stop me from playing it, and totally hyping it to my friends... And making my girlfriend buy me a copy so I could finally play online at Christmas time.
    Jul 29, 2009 1:09am PDT