Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot says 95% of PC games are pirated...

[Wesley]

This is the face of Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft's CEO who has been piloting the company since its inception as one of the five founding brothers from the Guillemot family in 1986. He's been at the helm as CEO for longer than most people can remember and has been the main driving force for the company adopting always-online DRM and various other authentication systems since the industry caught wind of the issue of piracy.

Recently, Yves stated that five to seven percent of people actually pay for their games on PC platforms, with the rest resorting to piracy. Yes, that means close to 95% of NAG readers who own computers apparently are rampant pirates. This means that the 25 million plus players on Valve's Steam network are representative of the five percent of five hundred million gamers in those percentages, the rest who pirate everything else.

Linky

Heading should read: 95% of PC gamers are pirates…

[CyniKill]

TL;DR: He's butthurt that nobody wants to buy recent Ubisoft's PC titles because they all have always online DRM.

[Wesley]

TL;DR: He's butthurt that nobody wants to buy recent Ubisoft's PC titles because they all have always online DRM.

But, but... there are other titles which need to be online (that do it right) which get more sales!

[Zoop]

TL;DR: He's butthurt that nobody wants to buy recent Ubisoft's PC titles because they all have always online DRM.

Except they seem to deny any possibility of uPlay even being the cause of the massive drop in Ubisoft PC sales.

[Lysis]

Orly? I thought Ubisoft's DRM was declared a complete success and has never been cracked and keeps all the little PC gaming ****s in line. So Assassin's Creed Brotherhood should really have shipped 6 million units, around 2 million more than Xbox. Well then **** me developers should all just stop making games for anything but PC and start using Ubisoft's ultra-supercallifragilisticexpialodocious-hyper effective DRM.

Ubisoft really seems to take pleasure in ****ting on their paying customers.

[blesner]

I am a PC Gamer only and bought all of there games since 2001...DAY 1

[.exe]

I wonder if they'll ever drop support for the platform altogether. Hope not.

[Zoop]

I wonder if they'll ever drop support for the platform altogether. Hope not.

To be honest, I don't really care at this point. Their uPlay DRM is an absolute dealbreaker for me. AC Revelations is the last Ubisoft PC title I've bought, and it's likely to stay that way.

[Kharrak]

Yeah, as is being said: Either they lied about their DRM being super brilliant and an all-wonder, or they are lying about the piracy rates.

Hell, I bought Splinter Cell in the steam sale, and I haven't played it yet due to uPlay :/

[.exe]

I haven't used Uplay before. What's so terrible about it?

[Zoop]

At first it required you to have a constant internet connection to their servers in order to play, but I think now it only requires it on startup. No internet? Absolutely no way to play your game short of cracking it. Pretty much the same as Diablo 3, except uPlay is really, really unreliable. My uPlay account seems to have 'forgotten' I own Splinter Cell Conviction and now I can't play it. Can't even be arsed to contact Ubisoft support to find out what's going on.

[Wesley]

Diablo's online requirement is one that works for the game though, because it's built to feel like am MMO but you're playing it with your buddies instead. I think Titan Quest's popularity was what pushed the game in that direction because it was absolutely brilliant playing with a friend.

Also, a lot of companies point at Team Fortress and say that there's a F2P game that works. Most conveniently don't mention that the game was bundled with The Orange Box and could actually be bought separately.

[Squirly]

Yves is so full of **** his eyes are brown.

[.exe]

At first it required you to have a constant internet connection to their servers in order to play, but I think now it only requires it on startup. No internet? Absolutely no way to play your game short of cracking it. Pretty much the same as Diablo 3, except uPlay is really, really unreliable. My uPlay account seems to have 'forgotten' I own Splinter Cell Conviction and now I can't play it. Can't even be arsed to contact Ubisoft support to find out what's going on.

Doesn't sound too good. I was hoping to buy Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry III as well. I guess I'm going to have to take a chance with Uplay and hope for the best.

[Wesley]

He's not all bad, I've played many Ubisoft-published titles that he pushed through himself and they have all been great in one way or another (Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell had his personal approval, afaik). Yves is just someone from the old guard who can't move with the times and is stuck in a loop concentrating on profit but not software as a service, like Valve is doing. And sadly, he'll drive people away or drive the company into the ground if he continues with ridiculous statements like these.

Doesn't sound too good. I was hoping to buy Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry III as well. I guess I'm going to have to take a chance with Uplay and hope for the best.

Get them on console (sexbox, because its cheaper). There's no Uplay restrictions and no always-online component and they will play arguably better, since you're always in a comfy chair in the lounge.

Funny enough, DRM is driving people to drop PC gaming and move to consoles and people frustrated with the lack of console mods and lack of LAN games are moving back to the PC. See-sawing as always.

[Toxxyc]

or they are lying about the piracy rates.

No, no it cannot be that... :P

Anyway, quick calculation, being fairly generous:

There are 500 million PC gamers in the world (very generous number).
5% of them buy games.
500,000,000 * 0.05 = 25,000,000 gamers that purchase games. Didn't the CoD community alone purchase more when MW3 released?

This guy is spewing BS guys.

Still, I find little problems with uPlay or Ubisoft's DRM. Mind you I have an ADSL, so that contributes to my ease. I see the issue with DRM for others, but it's not a deal-breaker for me. Just dislike this guy because he's cooking numbers. Sure, everybody (yes, EVERYBODY pirates something at some point, but it's not like 95% of PC gamers disregard the wickedness of a full Steam library or a rack full of cases (like me, I'm a hardcopy fan). He's butthurt.

[tarisma]

I have said it on another forum and I am going to say it again 87% of stats are made up

[Yuri]

Didn't the CoD community alone purchase more when MW3 released?

Not on the PC it didn't

[echo]

Except for the bull**** stats (Seriously, if this were true, their investors would blow a gasket if they even looked like they would develop anything for PC) and the fact that Ubisoft doesn't really care anymore for PC gaming don't you just love saying his name: Yves Guillemot.

Ooooh, say it again.

[.exe]

I guess the bottom line is that if it was not profitable to develop for PC, then there would be no AAA games for the platorm. Clearly, while not as profitable as on consoles, it's still worth the time to develop for the PC platform, or bring games over.

But even though the percentages provided by Ubi seem unrealistic, piracy is still shockingly high.