Guillemot: As many PC players pay for F2P as boxed product
93-95% PC piracy rate means F2P is just as effective, with lower costs
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has told GamesIndustry International that the percentage of paying players is the same for free to play as it is for PC boxed product: around five to seven per cent.
Speaking to GamesIndustry International editor Matt Martin at Gamescom, Guillemot revealed that free to play has been an effective way for Ubisoft to market product to territories in which PC gaming had been so badly affected by piracy that profit was impossible.
"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."
"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."
Added to that is the fact that free to play is generally cheaper to produce and distribute, able to cannibalise existing assets and avoid the costs of getting boxes on shelves. Whilst this does make the creation of new games easier, Guillemot was keen to point out that it's not a magic recipe - games must still be tailored to fit the audience's needs.
"We also take content which we've developed in the past, graphics etc, and we can make cheaper games and improve them over time. What's very important is that we change the content and make it a better fit to the customer as time goes on."
Whilst free to play has proven useful for the publisher in breaking new markets, it's not likely to replace the company's core business. Guillemot is confident that the console market will regain its strength once the next generation of machines becomes available, something which can't come soon enough.
"I think it's very important for new generations to come regularly with innovations for the industry, so I think we've been waiting a bit too long."
"We must be careful because the consoles are coming. People are saying that the traditional market is declining and that F2P is everything - I'm not saying that. We're waiting for the new consoles - I think that the new consoles will give a huge boost to the industry, just like they do every time that they come. This time, they took too long so the market is waiting.
"With the innovation that we'll see from, first, the Wii U then the other consoles, the market is going to grow enormously again.
"I think it's very important for new generations to come regularly with innovations for the industry, so I think we've been waiting a bit too long. What is important is that when those new generations do come, they bring enough innovation to make the market strong again."
93-95%?
I know people are unhappy with DRM but that's still pretty insane. Apparently they see their DRM policy as a success and it is "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection". If this percentage represents a reduction in piracy then wow...
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Kingman Cheng on 22nd August 2012 11:15am
This figure is either BS or he is talking about emerging markets ONLY.
Maybe someone can point out why this isn't possible in normal products that are boxed? I mean, why can't you cannibalise existing assets to make new games? I'm pretty sure that already happens - you only have to look at Warframe to see this in action... then there's the whole boxed-game argument.... isn't that just digitial distribution?!
This "argument" is so full of holes that Switzerland is filing an injunction against him because it looks too much like Swiss cheese!
nah, probably I'm just rambling.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Roberto Bruno on 22nd August 2012 2:14pm
Yves is in a good position to know the facts.
Beside, that's not even the point. If you are counting in your estimation about piracy rates all those countries like Russia, India, China, Brazil, where your products aren't even offered to potential customers in an affordable price range, then complaining because legions of penniless kids are downloading them it's pointless.
What a savy company should be concerned about is making their products more and more appealing to buyers and expand their customer base, not fighting illegal downloads with systems that annoy legit customers.
Some time ago Michael Pachter told Eurogamer that Ubisoft’s “PC game sales are down 90% without a corresponding lift in console sales.”
That doesn't really strike like a great success in their fight against piracy. You could even reduce piracy to ZERO but if you lose even just a 1% of your paying customers in the process, you are making a damn poor trade off.
I wonder how many people there are out there who would download it though, DRM hurts everyone but the pirate.
But again, he'd have a lot more legitimate consumers if Ubisoft didn't have the worst PC end-user experience in the entire gaming industry. There is no DRM worse, no company with worse customer service. I haven't bought an Ubisoft PC game since... wow, long time. I don't even remember. I don't pay for games from companies that abuse me as a consumer (I don't pirate them either, I just ignore them).
Of my 300+ Steam games, I don't know that any are from Ubisoft... congratulations Yves... that's an achievement in itself.
First his number is way off. The largest i have ever seen cited for the industry is 50% and that includes people who buy the game but then get a pirate copy to avoid Disc-lock, or who get a pirate copy to try and then buy a real one once they decide they like the game.
Secondly, his comparison is flawed, he should be comparing F2P to other *online* business models. There is no piracy of subscription MMORPGs because you cannot play them without the server. They return an order of magnitude more money for about an order of magnitude fewer users. they also have lower customer service costs because a paying audience is, in general, better behaved.
This smells to me like someone who made a big career commitment to F2P trying to defend his choice now that the true weakness of Zynga is showing.
Edited 3 times. Last edit by Jeffrey Kesselman on 22nd August 2012 5:05pm
This made my day, btw.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Frederic Eichinger on 22nd August 2012 5:10pm
Steam boasts over 30 million PC gamers on their service. I'm sure this number is probably higher, but we will go with 30 mil for now.
Yves states the piracy rate is 93-95% of all players. leaving a mere 5-7% of customers as legitimate.
So lets just say between Steam, Origin, GameFly, and all other Digital distribution channels, there's 50 million legitimate users.
Here's the fun part. using 50 million as a conservative estimate, and taking the opinion that only 5-7% of players are legitimate paying customers. that means the total PC gamer market world wide is anywhere from 664.3 million to 1 billion players. If that was true, then PC gaming would have never died out in the first place... not when over 1/5th of the world population is playing them!
I am completely for DRM, because Publishers are well within their right (in my opinion) to protect their intellectual property. To be more specific, I am completely for EFFECTIVE and NON-INTRUSIVE DRM. Any DRM that causes no problems for the customer, and can still be totally effective in the eyes of the publisher, is a win win situation. All this in mind, Even I don't believe the world's PC game piracy rate is 93-95% of all players. Those figures are absolutely over the top.
The thing about F2P games, is generally they are social games. Social games means interacting with others, buying selling, playing etc... interacting with others means internet connectivity required. internet connectivity required at all times to play = DRM. To play the game you're required to get on their servers anyways. But I think a DRM scheme with an online all the time requirement for a game like Assassin's Creed is too intrusive for even my tastes.
What if I want to play Assassin's Creed on my laptop while on a four hour plane ride?
I really can't say too much about Ubisoft's new UPlay platform because I have not researched it enough, but sometimes I wonder if the people on the inside are just as dissatisfied with their DRM scheme as the people are on the outside.
I don't understand how they can be 'penniless kids', yet have a gaming PC capable of playing Ubisoft games :p
That being said, Might and Magic VI is probably the last Ubisoft game I'll buy on PC, because of the draconian DRM. Online-DRM stopping me from saving my offline single-player game? Not cool.
Spending what's often a week of the average salary for a game, on the other hand, isn't a luxury many parents would concede to their children.
In short, he does nothing to add to the discussion regarding piracy, which in turn does nothing to help his contention that F2P is the way forward.
On the assumption that he is talking about, say, Russia, it might be he should go have a word with Gabe Newell, who has striven to get publishers to charge a lower price in countries where piracy is rife, which has made significant inroads into piracy in Russia. As a for-instance, click on this
http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=ru
This is the Russian Steam store. Now, Sleeping Dogs can be bought for 700 rubles. At the current exchange rate, that's a lttle under £14. A price like that is sure to entice PC gamers who would be likely to pirate.
Anno 2070 doesn't need a very hefty machine to run it. Also, games are repeated purchases. A PC isn't, unless you're upgrading.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 22nd August 2012 9:18pm
Would it be 1 of 19 pirated copies are regular users who would be buyers if they had no other choice? Five? 10? Surely, it is not all 19.
Moreover, when you take a broader look at PC Games, he may not be that wrong. If you don't take Blizzard games into account, recent best selling traditionnal PC games only hit the 3 million mark, at best.
Now look at the most played hardcore free to play games : League of Legends and World of Tanks have more than 30 million players. How come that a community of players that manages to only buy 2 or 3 million games when they're sold in stores, is far larger as soon as a good game is free-to-play ? Isn't it strange ?
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell/
Don't confuse people by giving them facts.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Bruce Everiss on 23rd August 2012 1:17pm
Ad hominem rubbish, you should be ashamed for propagating it.
Do you know Stuart Campbell's reputation?
Whilst there will never be a 100% solution for countering piracy, Gabe has a great mentality towards it which is clearly working out very well for them. Taking another approach is pretty much a must because no matter what anti-piracy technology people introduce, it's inevitable, someone will find a way around it.
Piracy will never be completely and utterly eradicated to a clean slate, so convincing their audience to do so otherwise is a very brave move. Imagine telling people about a decade ago you're going to 'out-service' the pirates!
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Kingman Cheng on 23rd August 2012 10:32am
The reason developers and publishers are interested in F2P is (a) some people are not interested in paying up front for what they are playing and (b) it looks like a good way to persuade some people to pay for what they are playing in amounts they are comfortable with handing over (as opposed to it being a choice between nothing or £40) with a very few people handing over lots of money. That is why F2P is the way forward for some people. It's not a contention, it is happening.
* such as it is; it's more of a shouting match.
Back to the point - piracy of full-price boxed/single-player product in Eastern Europe and Russia circulates around 90%. It's surely better in the US or Germany but probably similar in Southern Europe and worse in Latin America and Asia. Most Ubisoft's PC games are boxed and single-player. Add up the most stupid DRM ever, high and unflexible prices (only Steam makes an effort to adjust prices to different markets and to promote heavily) and it's possible that they ended up with only 5-7% end-users paying.
Heroes of Might and Magic, Silent Hunter or The Settlers could easily have that 30 mil of users LoL or Tanks enjoy nowadays, had Ubi only grabbed that opportunity.
Bruce: Ad hominem, really? Seems quite valid to bring up that your opinions on piracy can be seen to be on shaky ground on previous occasions.
But seriously, unless this site actually has credibility (which it doesn't seem to), are we really supposed to immediately change our opinion of his statement based on the disgruntled ramblings of somebody who could very well have been a plant to begin with way back when everything in the blog actually happened?
Whether EA or Ubisoft wants to admit it... they're doing their own thing because they're getting fed up with Steam (my personal opinion based on observation). EA did their own thing because Steam wouldn't let them have an in-game store (if I remember correctly), for a new release. By doing this, EA cuts Valve out of the profit, and Gabe needs his doughnut ms no surprise they've finally come out with their own platform. I honestly think the online-DRM scheme they developed with UPlay so long ago, is very unfavored by the majority of Ubisoft. But people like Yves, continue to push it because they believe the piracy is so rampant (according to their figures).
F2P is just another form of DRM, because you have to be on their servers most of the time to play the game, and you have to pay for stuff using their system, and you have to log in with their account system... So how is F2P different from UPlay, when you still have to be online all the time?
The World of Stuart Bruce Everiss/piracy article linked to is written by Stuart Campbell, a pretty well-known UK journalist and developer. His current site appears to be this:
http://wosblog.podgamer.com
An interesting (though rambling) interview is here
http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2010/11/01/pussies-galore/
I couldn't speak for the veracity of the Bruce Everiss/piracy article, but I remember Stu's work from gaming magazines a good 2 decades old, so I have no reason to doubt the piece. Your Mileage May Vary, of course. :)
But, you know, it's TOTALLY logical to remove Blizzard from the PC equation. Hey! Let's try that with HD game consoles! How many console games not from Activision and EA break 3 million units? HInt: Most companies have few if any games that can break that figure. In Ubisoft's case it's nothing without "Assassin's Creed" slapped on the box.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Nicholas Pantazis on 23rd August 2012 6:28pm
Those of us active in the industry at the time remember Imagine pissing away money on 'rock star excess' and none of us knew any drugs strong enough to explain the products they chose to make. Piracy may have knocked a few weeks life off the already dying beast but mismanagement killed it.