To all those who think Ubisoft should just let the pirates win... you have no idea how frustrating it is to spend many millions of dollars and several years of our life making a game, and then see statistics from our update servers that 15 to 20 people are playing pirated copies for every legitimately purchased copy. PC gamers have $2000+ computers and drop $200-500 on a video card every year. But most of them are too damn cheap to buy their games. They grew up pirating them through high school and university, and don't see any reason they should stop now. Most of them have managed to convince themselves that (somehow) they aren't doing anything wrong.
What is it about adding DRM that actually prevents me from playing your games that will make them NOT be too damn cheap to buy their games? I spend, hrrm ... $400 dollars a year on games. More, if you include the games we buy two copies of so that we can both play, but it's about $400 on the games and copies that I play. None of that will be spent on Ubisioft games from now on. Not for the PC and not for any of my consoles, either. Because there's enough good games around that I'll barely miss the games I was looking forward to and if Ubisoft treats me like a criminal, they won't have me as a customer.
People say Ubisoft shouldn't treat them like criminals. But an unfortunately large majority of PC gamers ARE criminals who will steal any game they can, and justify it to themselves however they want.
Your customers aren't. Don't turn away your customers by trying to magically convert the pirates.
By the way, after the reactions to Spore and Bioshock (and a other heavily DRM-ed titles) we tried shipping the recent Prince of Persia without any DRM. Guess what? It was pirated heavily.. more so than any of the previous Prince of Persia games.
According to sales figures released by Ubisoft Prince of Persia sold 2.2 million units in the first month of it's release. That quarter showed an increase in profits for Ubisoft from the same quarter the previous year, and the percentage of sales that came from PC sales was even with the previous year - not a drop. Dragon Age sold millions of copies without DRM, it's a hit.
So rather than give up on the PC market entirely (which is the other possible solution), we're trying the heavy DRM stuff. Some of those pirates (a small fraction probably) would buy a retail copy if they were not able to easily pirate the game. Most of them won't, and we don't care about those guys -- they can go pirate our competitors' games and thats fine.
I hope you're just as content that I can go buy your competitor's games - and that'll be fine
But after we spend 2+ years with hundreds of people working their ASSES off to make something just to entertain people, we would like them to pay us for it. Is it really so much to ask?/p>
Don't ask me, bub. I'm not a customer of yours, not anymore. Ubisoft clearly doesn't care about my business, with the way they expect to treat their customers, and I don't need them anymore than they need me. And what the fuck makes you think game programmers have cornered the market on hard work? I work hard too, and I'm not spending the money I worked my ASS off to entertain myself with on a company that thinks I'm a second class citizen for being a gamer.
