Gamers Stung by Ubisoft DRM Offered Free Stuff

[blarneypete]

[citation][nom]sincreator[/nom]I agree with what your saying, but even 10% of 5 million is still 500,000 copies. Take that and multiply it by $50 a game, and a company just lost 25 million. See what I'm saying? Even if it was only 5% that could of been sales, that's still 250,000 copies and 12.5 million lost.[/citation]

Next step, sue your grandmother or some 7 year old girl for the 12 million. That will fix the problem, right?

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]el33t[/nom]Though it is a smart way to tackle piracy, but the 'side-effects' are a bit too annoying[/citation]
You're largely on the ball there, but in truth, it's a HORRIBLE way of tackling piracy, because it contradicts the very rules of capitalism. If you want someone to buy a game rather than pirate it, you have to offer a better deal. In this case, they're offering a gimped game that is prone to downtime frequently and other frustrations, versus a game that is otherwise identical, but runs flawlessly. Now, if the former was free, and the latter $50US, you could bet that plenty would pay for the latter. But if the prices were reversed? It hence becomes a no-brainer that piracy is so frequent; many go not simply because they don't have to pay, but because it's a better product. Capitalism doesn't work in a perversely different way just because some publisher/label wishes it.

[citation][nom]sincreator[/nom]See what I'm saying?[/citation]
Yes, you're saying you have little to no clue how the sales model for games works. You see a $50US price sticker on AC2 at GameStop, and you think that Ubisoft gets every dime? Rather, they get a small fraction of that; there's a bunch of people between the developer and the gamer, and each wants to take their own cut. First off, GameStop (or Wal-Mart, or whoever sells it) wants their profit too; it's how they stay open. Then there's the cost of distributing all those copies; trucking them thousands of miles, from the publisher's warehouse, to the seller's warehouse, and finally to their store. Then there's the cost of stamping each disc, printing the box, manual, inserts, etc. and packing them all in. None of this is profit for Ubi; in the end, they get maybe a few dollars out of each sale.

At that point, you have to wonder if $1-2US million in "lost sales" is worth the effort of trying to recover. It's much the same as with the government, where some taxes and fines cost more to collect than they bring in. Again, capitalism at work. With "luxury goods" (i.e, those non-essential to living) you can't circumvent the rules of capitalism no matter how hard you try.

 

[sincreator]

You're largely on the ball there, but in truth, it's a HORRIBLE way of tackling piracy, because it contradicts the very rules of capitalism. If you want someone to buy a game rather than pirate it, you have to offer a better deal. In this case, they're offering a gimped game that is prone to downtime frequently and other frustrations, versus a game that is otherwise identical, but runs flawlessly. Now, if the former was free, and the latter $50US, you could bet that plenty would pay for the latter. But if the prices were reversed? It hence becomes a no-brainer that piracy is so frequent; many go not simply because they don't have to pay, but because it's a better product. Capitalism doesn't work in a perversely different way just because some publisher/label wishes it.


Yes, you're saying you have little to no clue how the sales model for games works. You see a $50US price sticker on AC2 at GameStop, and you think that Ubisoft gets every dime? Rather, they get a small fraction of that; there's a bunch of people between the developer and the gamer, and each wants to take their own cut. First off, GameStop (or Wal-Mart, or whoever sells it) wants their profit too; it's how they stay open. Then there's the cost of distributing all those copies; trucking them thousands of miles, from the publisher's warehouse, to the seller's warehouse, and finally to their store. Then there's the cost of stamping each disc, printing the box, manual, inserts, etc. and packing them all in. None of this is profit for Ubi; in the end, they get maybe a few dollars out of each sale.

At that point, you have to wonder if $1-2US million in "lost sales" is worth the effort of trying to recover. It's much the same as with the government, where some taxes and fines cost more to collect than they bring in. Again, capitalism at work. With "luxury goods" (i.e, those non-essential to living) you can't circumvent the rules of capitalism no matter how hard you try.

LOL, so by what your saying the game companies only get a few bucks from a sale. So "if" that was true, why even make them? Game cost 10-20 million to make, but they only get a few bucks for a couple hundred thousand copies? So that 10-20 million dollar game gets them only a few hundred thousand or a million? Sounds a little messed up to me, by your logic.

Honestly IMO alot of the guys here are tring to justify piracy. Try doing that once the rest of the companies pull from the PC because of it. Alot have and more will. If this trend continues, all we'll be left with is RTS's and MMO's soon. Well hopefully the next console is practically a PC, then maybe we'll be allright.

 

[broketechjunkie]

I love how my friend (who bought the game 1 week ago on steam, and didn't have any DRM issues) gets a free game but I (who bought the game 2 days after it released and was disconnected/unable to connect several times) have yet to receive an email. gg Ubisoft.

 

[cag404]

Awesome!! New Content!! Now if I could just play it...I was going to buy this one after hearing about it, but will probably pass. Starting to get tired of DRM like this.

 

[jimmysmitty]

So free content. Meh. I will stick with my TF2 that has had more than a new games worth of free content, more to come and tons of user creatd content no in the form of hats/weapons.

Sorry Ubisoft. Your DRM is epic in teh fail.

 

[Belardo]

DRM still blows... they want to fix the problem, remove the DRM or start using STEAM.

5 million people pirated NFS Shift?! HOLY SMOKES! That is horrible! For a publisher, that is painful. But there isn't much they can do about it. I'd say that a large part of the piracy market is China. The ratio of piracy is still pretty much the same as always in the USA & Europe, but people do buy games. But when you have a high speed connection, it makes it easy to get a pirated version of a game. Those people most likely would never have bought the game anyways.

Now, perhaps the smart thing to do would be to make a china-only version for $8... but I think the game would still be pirated pretty much just as much.

 

[Guest]

What i fear is this new drm scheme will make even more piracy. Noone will want thier games to connect to thier servers to validate hence ppl will make online work arounds(cracks). If your going to have to go through hell to crack a legal game then why not take it 1 step further?

I fear this will also push people towards consoles and there escalating cost of business.Remember thiers piracy there too and its a one time deal for all games.

You cannot stop piracy PERIOD so quit making your customers lives miserable.Piracy is a undiagnosable number kinda like the war on terror.Since torrent trackers some person has looked at a total # of seeds and say "we just lost 864784769458 dollars".That is a wrong assumption most werent gonna pay you anyway thats something you have to realize so its not lost revenue.

I support ppl when thier worth supporting.I support bioware fully i want to see them succeed.Also Relic for thier superb RTS's i know spending my money there will always return enjoyment.

If game developers focused on putting out good games as much as they do piracy i bet the situation will clean itself up some.

What happens when UBI or EA quits hosting the authentication servers? You just wasted your money thats what....and it will happen someday it costs them to keep it up.A cost that could have been used to pay thier game developers more for hard work.

They dont like used games either because they think its cutting into thier profit margin.WRONG same situation the game got rated a 7 on ign so it isnt worth to alot of ppl spending what it costs new so when they get bored they can play it for what its worth.They too werent gonna spend full price for it.

The men in suits are just gonna have to figure out the hard way.

 

[Greenmantis]

You know... Its gotta suck being a game developer at companies like these. Spend months or years working on a project, doing a good job and trying to make a fun and entertaining game, only to have some corporate dickhead come along and ruin all of it for the sake of corporate greed. Coders are not dumb. They know that there will be people stealing their work, but they also know that DRM crap will prevent thousands of people from purchasing the game.

And what about the guys that work on the writing the DRM crap that goes onto the game? FOR SHAME! It must suck going to work every day knowing that you are screwing over your coworkers, working hard to design a great game, only to have you come along and cap in the knees with a 12 gauge.

I will vote with my wallet and not purchase games with restrictive DRM, or BS DLC with keys.

FU Dolphin!
FU Whale!

 

[blarneypete]

[citation][nom]sincreator[/nom]LOL, so by what your saying the game companies only get a few bucks from a sale. So "if" that was true, why even make them? Game cost 10-20 million to make, but they only get a few bucks for a couple hundred thousand copies? So that 10-20 million dollar game gets them only a few hundred thousand or a million? Sounds a little messed up to me, by your logic.Honestly IMO alot of the guys here are tring to justify piracy. Try doing that once the rest of the companies pull from the PC because of it. Alot have and more will. If this trend continues, all we'll be left with is RTS's and MMO's soon. Well hopefully the next console is practically a PC, then maybe we'll be allright.[/citation]
I'll make up some figures, and I bet I'm not too far off. Game X costs $20 million to produce (that's a high production cost). It has $250 million in sales (fair, but not really high). Game maker gets 15% of that ($7.50 from a $50 game). Game maker profits by $17.5 million.

This is not about justifying piracy. This is about whether or not the $450,000 is worth it in the long run. Maybe it is, but it sounds like a lot of people watching this issue have already decided not to buy a crippled product. And that sounds like a lot of lost sales to me.

 

[techguy911]

Does drm stop piracy? well lets see........2 million seeds and 4 million leachers well that does not seem like like its working to me lol.

 

[builderbobftw]

Fix DRM issues by giving people more DRM infested crap=fail.

 

[matt87_50]

omg Ubisoft, could you be any more fail, so now you have effectively ripped off anyone who bought the special edition. honestly, the worst game developer (or should I say publisher) in the world! I will never buy anything from you!

 

[matt87_50]

why don't they just hire a guy to troll all the torrent sites and other places people go to pirate games and then chuck up a fuss? that would be the proper thing to do! actually police the internet!! don't get me wrong, I know that brings up the idea of Chinese censorship but that IS NOT what I mean! I mean people who actually just go through the same process your average pirate would, and then actually ENFORCE the DMCA properly and intelligently on the supply chain! you know, just like they would in the REAL WORLD!! the legal system and people in it need to become more knowledgeable of how technology works, so they can properly handle the situation. if they did understand it, they would find that it really isn't vastly different from how the real world works, and they could easily transition laws and methodologies from the real world into the digital one. this would be better for everyone, as it would actually REDUCE blanket solutions such as SHIT DRM and blind censorship!

 

[JustinHD81]

What game developers need are alternative income streams, rather than just selling the game itself. Valve has done this quite well with Steam, though I think that one further step might be to create a Steam like portal that can be licensed out, so that ISP's or "Gaming Websites" can host Steam and create game servers, then can sort out how they pay for the software for the platform by advertising or pay for use or a mixture. Gamers can then choose a specific provider by price and performance, this would also allow for some verification, by using the simple key system as long as a provider/host has access to authentication independent of the company's servers if one provider/host server goes down then potentially with a few clicks a user could find another provider and maybe pay a small fee to play online for a short time whilst their usual provider get's it's butt into gear to get the server online again. There's a lot of opportunity, single player games can have in game stores that allow them to purchase items/expansions online requiring authentication of their game and then if they don't have an authentic copy make them an offer to purchase a key without intimidating the user, allowing new ways to attract customers. There's a lot of possibility, the company's just need to experiment and find the best method of attracting $$$ without scaring off their clientelle

 

[guanyu210379]

I hate DRM...why don't just hire specialists to hack all torrent and all rapidshare-like websites instead of throwing sh*t to the legitimate buyers.

 

[Hilarion]

Wayyyyyy too little Farrrrrr too late.... They should have killed the DRM to begin with. Then I'd be a customer.

Steam isn't really the answer either. I've tried it out and some things work off line, others do not. I never play while connected to the internet so that scrubs the Steam stuff for me also.

 

[isamuelson]

Sorry UbiSoft. Not good enough. Until you remove the DRM from this game, I will not purchase it nor install it on my PC. I'll just spend my money on other company's games that don't treat their customers like the criminals/thieves that pirate software. Yes, that's right. Pirate is too glamorous a name to give to these people. They are thieves, period.

 

[tykus]

Doesn't steam do the same thing, but without crippling your ability to play O/L? (minus the initial install of the game of course.

 

[isamuelson]

Doesn't steam do the same thing, but without crippling your ability to play O/L? (minus the initial install of the game of course.

Yup. You're correct. In addition, Steam does not tie your game to your machine. It ties it to your account. Therefore, if you get a new PC, you can run the games on that new PC and no revalidation is required.

Now, I've stated I refuse to purchase this product because of the DRM. I won't pirate it, but didn't they just lose a sale because of this? [:isamuelson] WOW! And I didn't even pirate the game.

But I thought that was the reason they did this. They're losing purchases of the game to pirated copies, so what do they do? Institute a draconian DRM protection scheme that screws over the legit customer to try and prevent pirating, yet the pirates have already cracked it and legit customers that normally would have purchased the game have decided not to. Wow! Way to save sales there, UbiSoft and EA.

 

[flinch130]

It's crazy that this does not mention PC players of Ubi's other DRM fiasco Silent Hunter 5? Probably because it is not part of the lucrative (and much larger) Xbox & PS3 player base?

Not only does this game have DRM issues, but is also woefully incomplete - only 1 patch since release that fixed some issues (but other glaring issues remain).

I do believe that Silent Hunter users are also getting free games - although Ubi clearly do not know their player base as they are offering the choice of Shaun White Snowboarding and Prince of Persia (how about offering games that these players may actually like Ubi? hmmmm RUSE? HAWX?).

Thanks for UPlay also Ubi! Useless Play is more like it.