Sorry to get into this again, but as much as I want to ignore it, this one’s significant. Ubisoft have stated that they’re artificially delaying the launch of EndWar on PC because of, you guessed it, piracy.
Talking to VideoGaming247, Ubisoft Shanghai director and former Total War “Evangelist”, Michael de Plater said,
“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two.”
He continues,
“But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC.”
This hardly seems worth saying, but of course we in no way endorse piracy. Illegally downloading games is, well, illegal. But what we want – what we want so much that our sides ache and our foreheads pulse – is for the truth to be at the centre of this discussion. We want people who make these decisions, who give comments like this, to present the facts and figures that back up their statements.
We want to see the demonstrable evidence for the harm piracy has on sales. Because if it’s true, then yes, action needs to be taken. But if it isn’t (and history suggests it very well might not be – the most successful formats in the last 30 years have always been the most pirated, with the DS currently proving this on a dramatic scale), then untold damage is being done to the PC platform by claims like this.
What’s fascinating here is to consider whether this is an isolated case, or whether this attitude is endemic amongst publishers. Is this why we’re not seeing Mirror’s Edge on PC until next year? Does this explain why GTA takes nine months to find its way onto our preferred platform? Are we missing out on Fable 2 because of a fear of the pirates? Halo 3? Has the reputation of the PC, so far entirely without corroborating evidence, hobbled it?
At the moment it feels like an out-of-control rumour is driving a steamroller over the PC. Increasing numbers of publishers, who frankly wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the PC, are jumping on board. And this is despite the continued huge sales on PC via the dramatic success of digital distribution. The perceived, received opinion is that, “If someone downloads a copy of a game, that’s a lost sale.” As much as this might immediately appear to make sense, a moment’s scrutiny reveals it to be, so far, entirely unfounded. (Stardock’s Brad Wardell wrote eloquently on this subject earlier this year). Surely the people publishing games should be desperately researching to find out why their PC games might not be selling in the volumes they might hope, rather than just assuming it’s piracy, and then declaring it as a fact. It might be piracy! It really might be. But without evidence, without facts and figures to back this claim up, it can only be considered hearsay, and deeply unproductive.
So come on publishers, put your mouth where your money is, and organise some research into this. Demonstrate that PC piracy damages console sales, and you’ll win our attention. From that point, we can start creating imaginative new methods of controlling the problem. Until then, actively hobbling the PC yourselves is quite the self-fulfilling tragedy. (Thanks to the GriddleOctopus for the tip).
Related Stories:
cliffski – no one is claiming that piracy isn’t massive, or that piracy doesn’t affect sales. You’re arguing against a position that no one’s making. The question being asked is: does piracy make a significant difference to sales? And: does delaying the release of a game make any sense in the face of possible piracy?
To be fair, Ubisoft is no great loss. Their track record to releasing quality (even finished..) games and PC Ports is mostly pretty damned awful over the past few years, not to mention post release support.
Check out the awesome bugs they even managed to release onto the PS3 version of R6 Vegas 2 for example (thank god you can patch PS3 and 360 now! No more extra expensive QA required for console releases!)
Hey I did a large scale anonymous survey!
No publisher ever contacted me asking for any data though. You are right, that they don’t seem to care what the PC gamers have to say :(
It helped me anyway, I think.
@John Walker
The crux of my point was that I’m sure they know it’s not piracy and they know they can’t empirically prove it is, so why take the risk of indicating something via research that might remove a mechanism for making more money.
If this research is done, and I really think it should be, it wont come from the Publishers because they have nothing to gain.
It would be expense to research and the net result would weaken their position or not improve it. Because even if they prove they are right, what happens then? We all say oh, okay, sorry. Thanks for finding that out.
And everything carries on as it is because they assume they’re right already.
Exactly cliffski. Which is why you’re my developer hero! It’s so devastating that not one publisher has approached you.
GLOWi – PC gaming is not dying, but there is more money to be made on consoles (because of higher game prices, less need for technical knowledge and, dare I say it, lower standards).
That in itself can explain many publishers’ preference to console developing.
@cliffski
you forget that buying the cheaper PC one instead of the expensive & inferior console one is also motivation for the publisher and doesn’t criminalise the pc games playing public.
@ Hitler’s gay dad
Pirate less games then!
@John Walker
Yes, in my opinion piracy makes significant difference in sales. Often at PRS laughed at Crytek said, that there was 20:1 pirated to sold Crysis ratio. If only every 20 th pirated copy was bougtht there were doubled Crysis sales.
Glowi:
1) Where are your figures to suggest that the numbers of RPG/RTS games on the PC have gone down?
2) It doesn’t appear to be dying. However, it’s not as profitable as the consoles, now the consoles are competitive with the PC.
3) The PC is now far less likely to receive exclusives because it’s financially imprudent for a publisher to do that. Until the latest generation of consoles, the PC was always significantly advanced, and thus the top-end games could only exist on PC. Now the playing field is more level, it makes sense to develop your game for the largest audience possible, which is cross-platform.
Again, I’d need to see figures to demonstrate that the PC is selling poorly before I could try to figure out why.
You can try, as has been tried with Pirate Bay, I recall their server centre (or whatever) was actually raided. Obviously they’re still running though.
I would say that saying these sites have large bandwidth use due to PC games is a bit misleading, not that I’ve researched it, but there are also an awful lot of films/etc available via torrent.
@ GLOWi
yeah but is the figure every 20th or every 200th or every 2000th or every single one we just don’t know the extent of it and no ones interested in finding out, because publishers relies that most people will shift platforms with the game as long it’s not across the 360 ps3 battle line.
@cliffski
That would only make sense if the torrent sites were doing anything illegal. Something which has yet to be tested in the courts.
I think my problem here is that the industry is crying foul but with no evidence (as JW says). It’s very easy to come up with an argument for either side based on assumptions and anecdotal evidence what annoys me is that these arguments are used to treat gamers badly with late releases, dreadful DRM etc. (I wont buy Spore for instance.. that’ll show ‘em) If the industry did as JW suggests and actually proves their point then may be there would be far less animosity between them and the gaming community. If piracy is such a huge issue then I would have thought some proper research into it would be in the interest of all sides.
The more paranoid among you may think that the fact that the industry has never done this research before is an indication of how they feel it might go. I couldn’t possible comment.
I think the only real answer to this is more restrictive DRM and Oblivion with guns.
@ Ignatius J. Smiley
You contradict yourself. if there is more money on consoles and developers are leaving to them then PC gaming is dying/declining, at least in AAA games area.
higher game prices are not the reason definitely, there are platform holder fees.
as a result of multiplatform development it makes sense to shift the majority of people onto the most expensive platform, the publishers realise it’s fairly easy to shift sales from PC to 360 or PS3 but certainly not between the two back to the PC and since the PC is only cheaper to develop for if it’s the only platform and the returns are lowere due to a lower installed base of games capable machines and lower sale price, it doesn’t make sense for them to do that.
2DBoy took some chances by putting no DRM whatsoever on World of Goo. I’m curious as to how this will impact sales and piracy for them, seeing as so far I haven’t found any pirated copies of it floating around.
Of course I pre-ordered it months ago; I was just looking out of curiosity. As a game designer myself I follow all the debate about DRM and software piracy closely. We released a game not too long ago. Our game had some form of copy-protection on it. And wouldn’t you know it: it popped up on all the large torrent sites a day before release…
I have no interest in EndWar or in half-arsed Ubi PC ports, so in this case thanks for keeping your stink off the shelves for a while guys.
Nallen, the extra 10/20 pounds mostly goes to the console manufacturer. They charge beaucoup wampum for the privilege of putting discs in their machines. It’s you getting the PC version for 10 pounds two months later for basically no reason, or of course P-wording it, that brings a twitch to the publisher’s cheekbone.
What are the torrent/piracy numbers [hereon known as Gillens] for Trials 2 or Team Fortress 2?
You know if people do not value your game enough to buy it months after it’s console release why not package it with 3 or 4 other games late to release?
There are so many revenue streams to be utilised with the connectivity of a PC to willfully ignore them and rely solely on the two weeks your game is ‘hot’ and on shelves to recoup the years invested in it is pretty prehistoric thinking and speaks volumes about the publisher.
Excellent article. I think the whole things tragically amusing really. A bit of a viscous circle. There’s little doubt in my mind that at one point piracy was small, and the dent it made on wallets was minuscule. However, money grabbing tossers who didn’t really understand what they were looking at kicked up a big fuss and now it is general knowledge that these options exist. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have increased in time and more PC users become savvy, but I reckon the put it in to fast forward.
@Nick
i’ve lloled (literally laughed out Loud, instead of the common figurative one) twice at what you have to say today, good job.
Also End War along with Hawx are guaranteed to be shit. If I just wasted 2 years of my life on them I’d be bitter too.
[I'm not sure any such thing is "guaranteed". Careful now - Ed]
I think this is a PR mistake for Ubisoft if they want to make money from PC users. They’ve essentially added ‘J’ number of PC gamers to the list of people who will look less favourably on this game and spread bad word of mouth about it among their less game-internet-o-sphere aware friends. The resulting lost sales that that amounts to has to be added to ‘S’, the amount of lost sales due to people no longer wanting to buy the game due to its percieved ‘oldness’ in the ever faster which game is hot news cycles. Then added to that is the amount of lost sales ‘V’ on future games by ubisoft created by damage to the ubisoft brand through PR mistakes and lost sales.
If those numbers added togather are greater than the number of sales added by pirates rejecting piracy for playing a game sooner then I guess they are =1in the money stakes.
Personally I think his words sound a bit mean and as a primarily PC-centric user I feel I’m being punished for crimes that I may or may not have commited. Also he sounds a bit out of date. In light of the fate of the music industriy (note last weeks establishment of a musicion’s ‘union’ as a partial replacement of the record labels) when trying to combat piracy with fire I expect publishers are going to have much more success with the itunes model. Consoles seem safer at the minute but how long will that safety last if the same problems exist in the buisness model?
@The Sombrero Kid
Yes, every 20 th copy is a guess, but in my opinion a reasonable guess. There’s no way to find out the real percentage of potential buyers.
If a developer/publisher says every pirated copy is a lost profit I say crap. If they say every 20th pirated copy is a lost profit I say fair enough.
How much does Microsoft/Sony/etc take as a license cut on a game sale? That way we can work out true value of a license-free PC game vs. a console game.
“Although it distresses me to argue with anyone called Dizet Sma (even if spelt wrong)”
Yeah, I know it’s missing an I, but Diziet is a girls name :)
Cliffski, if Y is the amount of sales lost due to piracy and negates any amount of actual PC sales, then why bother putting money into development of a PC title at all?
I could understand the decision to not develop on that basis, but this “release it later” thing sounds like a “have cake, eat cake, have more cake” scenario.
why is there a picture of mirror’s edge up there? i swear they’d shove in any old graphics if they thought they could get away with it, how lazy! just as well i pirate RPS on the PC instead of paying for it on the consoles like all you losers!
@ GLOWi
I was just pointing out that consoles are more profitable than they have ever been, and therefore are more attractive to publishers. This doesn’t mean PC gaming is dying, it just means it has stronger competition.
Are PC games selling significantly less than they used to? Wikipedia’s list of best-selling PC games doesn’t seem to indicate that, seeing as it has a good mix of old and new titles.
I am deliberately NOT going to buy this now just because they’ve insulted my intelligence with such absolute BULLSHIT!
They’re trying to maximise console sales because the margins are lower for consoles and they don’t want any prospective console buyer to be tempted into getting the cheaper PC version.
[Bother to] you Ubisoft.
Mirror’s Edge is there because I mention it in the following paragraph, and it just looks so pretty!
I quite like EndWar, from what I’ve played.
KG
About time someone said this stuff. Refreshing to see someone approaching piracy intelligently and honestly.
Let’s not lose track, AIM. The post above is not about having a go at Ubi – it’s about asking why. As I’ve said above, they could be right. Piracy might be destroying their console sales, and they might be quite legitimate in their fears. Or they might be completely wrong. What we need is for someone to step up and do some serious research into this. We don’t need people shouting at people and calling them names, which I’ll delete from now on.
Is this EndWar an FPS or an RTS? If so, then yes, it will lose a certain nontrivial amount of sales due to PC piracy if released on that platform.
The core of Ubisoft’s argument seems to be that releasing a PC version concurrently with console versions is not only a minor profitmaker compared to consoles, but actually eats into the amount of copies sold on consoles as well. A position that sounds plausible.
There might be some guys who hold their Xbox360/PS3 as their primary console but also have a relatively well-equipped PC for obvious reasons. They also might consider EndWar a game that’s not on top of their most anticipated releases, but somewhat on the radar nevertheless. Faced with a choice between getting the game for $70 on their primary gaming platform vs. torrenting it for their secondary platform, a sizable lot might choose the latter. If Ubisoft has a reasonable fear of that happening, then they’ve just made a sound business decision. The problem, as always, is the dearth of reliable data, and the difficulties in compiling it.
On the hypothetical scenario that I might pirate a game, my personal threshold for torrenting a PC game would be significantly higher than torrenting it for my trusty old Xbox (not that there’s too many of them coming up any longer). My affection for all things PC runs much deeper and would be a major factor in that decision. I don’t find it too hard to imagine that a lot of people might feel the opposite.
By delaying the PC release of a game for three to six months surely the publishers must understand that that on it’s own will hurt sales.
The games industry isn’t split along clear pc/xbox/ps/nintendo lines. The majority of people I know who play games on a PC also have at least one other console. Now to me it stands to reason if you delay for six months the release of a game on PC which is esentially a straight port of the console game unoptimised for keyboard and mouse input gamers are going to get savvy quickly. They will buy the console version and not the PC version. why would anyone want two copies of the game?
So by delaying of course you are going to sell less copies on PC that stands to reason as a percantage of your target audience will already have bought the game on another format. Maybe they would then pirate the game to see any differences but it still doesn’t equate to a lost sale.
Even if 20% of your target audience owns the game on another format that equates to a likely 20% lost sales on the PC..
Surely there should be some sort of outcry in the specialist press. If Gamer or Edge or another high circulation PC mag called these companies out repeatedly, surely they’d be obliged to reply with a little bit of substance instead of sensationalism? Surely?
@Ignatius J. Smiley
I don’t think it’s all about sales. Different parties say PC gaming is dying for different reasons. And it’s true in some ways. The PC (in terms of gaming) isn’t what it was for various reasons, some of which JW has mentioned (what it was is dying).
And PC gaming is dying in that… there really is a lot of shit about at the moment. Lazy console ports and that. Even the unlazy console ports have a little too much of the console about them to really feel like PC games, let alone good PC games.
But alongside that there seems to be a new wave of ‘indie’ stuff happening. Partly thanks to new means of distribution and partly due to the above stuff. So there’s a little bit of death about it and a little bit of renaissance about it, which makes sense really.
So this game will be a slightly better looking BF2142? Can’t we as gamers just take a, “I couldn’t give a flying shite about this game” approach to things like this? Sure it sucks we didn’t get it first or even along side the consoles but does it REALLY matter?
Most people are too busy to play every game ever released on their favourite platform and even then they usually have a back catalogue of games to go through once more or continue playing.
Further more, clearly there are much needed answers to be had from company exec’s that shy away because either 1) They don’t like to admit anything or 2) Consider any publicity good or bad, good publicity because something like this always gets an internet buzz. It would be nice to get these answers but then what? Knowing the truth or not is more than likely not going to change the decision made to push back a release date. Perhaps they use this extra time to work on security features which is only needed for the PC release. Maybe that extra time is for research into piracy, maybe all they do is check, triple check and quadruple check their game can work on a number of PCs, or do even more testing.
I say again. It is BF2142, but shinier, who gives a toss?
that wouldn’t change their business decisions one bit. Such decisions are made by spreadsheets. Or in my case, staring at my inbox.
John Walker:
1) Were there any other AAA PC exclusive FPS except Crysis (And Valve titles which are not exclusive, but at least they’re not ports, which is quite easy as Valve is not pushing thechnical limits)? Any RPG except Witcher? Will there be any in the near future?
2. Well it’s not dying, but in my eyes appears declining. publishers and developers are moving to consoles. I wonder then why there are more money on consoles when PC market is definitely bigger. You can say that problem is in wide variety in PC configurations. Ok, then behind declining of pc platform are technical issues.
3) Well, you contradict yourself. Now you’re reasoning the decline of PC exclusives/developer migrations when in 1) you refused to believe that there is such decline. I don’t mind multiplatform titles, but I want games developed primarily for PC, not ported back. If there are no such titles I say PC gaming is declining.
The cynic in me thinks ir is to maximize profit.
Generally console games are sold at a higher price premium than PC games so therefore by delaying PC release they are hoping that a percentage of multiplatform users will buy the console version.
small contribution:
Local shopping center.
You can buy games in these shops
EB games (removed one shelf not long ago as well as one table where PC games where)
Game (removed one whole shelf. only one is left compared to 5-7 for PS2, 2 for PS3, 5 for Xbox360 )
Dick smith’s electronics (one huge shelf was removed just last week. one is left only)
Big W (shop which sells everything. from sweets, to movies ending on car tyres. PC game segment practically non-existing not counting sims)
JB-HF (nothing changed recently. one big shelf comparably in size to ps2 or xbox360. a bit smaller maybe)
Retailers are moving away from PC game market. at least here in australia. reason is cause they don’t sell as well as console games.
if piracy is the reason? or maybe digital distribution, distributors stupid decisions?
not sure. but it is harder to find a pc game to buy.
@futage
I don’t really buy into that – to my mind there has been loads of good PC games recently, and a lot of stuff I’m looking forward to on the horizon, indie or otherwise.
@ Ignatius J. Smiley
I agree that better console competion can be the reason for developer migrations -> less to none pc exclusives.
But still, developers leaving and almost no AAA games developed for pc in my eyes looks like declining. Definitely not thriving.
@Ignatius J. Smiley
Aye, I don’t fully buy it either. Though I do think there is truth in it. I do think the dross:gold ratio is particularly high, currently (ignoring the indie stuff). And I certainly think there are distinctly fewer true PC games currently (i.e. games which wouldn’t really work or would be a significantly different experience if played on another platform), which is perhaps important. I realise this is partly due to the consoles becoming more PC-like in some ways (having internets for example) but it’s also because developers design a game to be playable on both PCs and consoles which (for me, anyway) always seems to result on something which doesn’t feel quite right on PC – doesn’t take advantage of the stuff a PC can do which a console can’t (I’m talking mainly about UI/control stuff here, not graphics and that).
@Ignatius J. Smiley
Depends on the genre. There are a lot o f indie games, strategies, MMOs and adventures.
But no AAA FPSes except for Valve and Crytek (so far) titles a and only a few AAA RPGs: Witcher and Diablo 3 on very distant horizon.
What the Ubi guy says makes perfect sense.
A lot of hardcore console users have a PC. Why tempt them with a day zero pirated PC version when you can easily delay the PC version, get your console sales, then release it and capitalize on any crumbs left.
It is so obvious, why even bother to discuss it?
So simultaneously release it on Steam and just postpone the boxed version if they’re that worried.
@ Lukasz
I agree buying pc games in retail is hard now even though I would prefer a steamed copy of the said game online, an example would be the witcher enchanced edition I can’t buy it anywhere new however CEX and gamestation sell it 2nd hand, other shops (which dont have 2nd hand departments) have virtually non existant range of pc games except the sims and anti-virus software, pc gaming is dying in retail sales but not on online distribution sales at the moment the pc gaming industry is moving towards complete online sales as for developers leaving the pc I predict that some russian companies which are emerging will save the day (cryostasis I’m looking at you) sure they may be buggy at first but they will be new ideas comapred to bog standard corridor shooters.
@Glowi, I would bring into question how many AAA FPS titles there are full stop, on any and every platform. I can think of a whole bunch that came out fairly recently but not many of them were that good, despite lots of expensive developement. Incidentally, it’s getting less financially sound to release exclusives on the PC, what with AAA game developement now costing as much as some blockbuster movies you will want to maximise returns and hence be on as many platforms as possible rather than limiting your market arbitrarily (and it is arbitrary to favour one platform over another if they can all run the game, aside from certain financial incentives).