Ubi DRM: Their Side of the Story

[Hutch]

Those 95% aren't "potential" players, they're lost sales. The pirates stole those sales from Ubi.

 

I'm sure I'm rehashing something you all have argued about before, but what's the difference between pirating the game and me borrowing my brothers copy of AC2 for PS3?

I was just running with the previous exaggeration. I was parodying the nonsense that people who play the game without paying for it are "lost sales".

Shoulda used green text amirite?

[NiX]

I was acknowledging what you were doing. Doubly green!

Your brother bought that copy, he's lending it to you. He's not able to play the game while you're playing it, thus there's no illegal copying going on, and no copyright infringement.

So then why are sales ever mentioned in piracy arguments? They still lost a sale.

[tgr]

Your brother bought that copy, he's lending it to you. He's not able to play the game while you're playing it, thus there's no illegal copying going on, and no copyright infringement.

So then why are sales ever mentioned in piracy arguments? They still lost a sale.

If you want to look at the world in black and white, then sure. You've fired the game up so it's automatically a lost sale. I'd call that faulty logic, however.

In my world, however, lending a game to someone or giving a game to someone after you've bought it, isn't even remotely close to piracy. It can lead to a lost sale, sure, but that is not even in the same ballpark as piracy. Most people define piracy as "making illegal copies", aka "copyright infringement". Transferring ownership of a copyrighted material, either temporary or permanently, isn't illegal last time I checked.

But honestly, has nobody ever borrowed a game from a friend, found out that the game does indeed rock, so you go out and buy it for yourself because your friend is nagging you to get his game back so HE can play it?

[eldaec]

This thread is losing its edge.
 

[Samwise]

But honestly, has nobody ever borrowed a game from a friend, found out that the game does indeed rock, so you go out and buy it for yourself because your friend is nagging you to get his game back so HE can play it?

Rationalize your theft however you want, pirate scum.

[NiX]

In my world, however, lending a game to someone or giving a game to someone after you've bought it, isn't even remotely close to piracy.

I didn't say it was piracy, I asked why sales are mentioned. A lost sale is a lost sale regardless of whether it's because it was borrowed or pirated.

Sins of a Solar Empire proved that sales don't necessarily make for a compelling argument against piracy.

[Samwise]

I didn't say it was piracy, I asked why sales are mentioned.

Because there's no other way that piracy can be made to resemble actual theft.  If someone steals a loaf of bread, the store has lost a loaf of bread, and this is easy to understand.  If someone copies a piece of software, the only thing the store has lost is a possible sale.  Someone trying to make the case that piracy equals theft has to make the case that the lost sale is real and has a tangible value that has been transferred from its rightful owner to someone else.

[tgr]

I didn't say it was piracy, I asked why sales are mentioned. A lost sale is a lost sale regardless of whether it's because it was borrowed or pirated.

Sins of a Solar Empire proved that sales don't necessarily make for a compelling argument against piracy.

My impression is that the people yammering on about "lost sales" tend to be publishers, who seem to be very for seeing this particular issue in black and white. In their world, borrowing a copy from a friend can't possibly mean you'll try it out, find it's good, and buy your own copy. No, it's got to be a lost sale.

But what's this about SoaSE? I thought it was goo that was the poster-child for how bad piracy was these days.

[Rasix]

But honestly, has nobody ever borrowed a game from a friend, found out that the game does indeed rock, so you go out and buy it for yourself because your friend is nagging you to get his game back so HE can play it?

Personally? No.  When I borrow a game, I beat it and hand it back.  Been this way forever with me.  Even playing a game at someone's house has rarely led to a sale, but it did eventually with Metal Gear Solid 4 once I actually had a PS3.

[Threash]

But honestly, has nobody ever borrowed a game from a friend, found out that the game does indeed rock, so you go out and buy it for yourself because your friend is nagging you to get his game back so HE can play it?

Personally? No.  When I borrow a game, I beat it and hand it back.  Been this way forever with me.  Even playing a game at someone's house has rarely led to a sale, but it did eventually with Metal Gear Solid 4 once I actually had a PS3.

This.  Not only that but i can't see any scenario were you'd loan out a game before you are done with it.

[WayAbvPar]

Even playing a game at someone's house has rarely led to a sale

I am completely the opposite. Playing UO at convinced me I needed a system to play it. Playing Guitar Hero at Furiously's house convinced me I needed to buy a 360 for GH II.

[AutomaticZen]

Your brother bought that copy, he's lending it to you. He's not able to play the game while you're playing it, thus there's no illegal copying going on, and no copyright infringement.

So then why are sales ever mentioned in piracy arguments? They still lost a sale.

If you want to look at the world in black and white, then sure. You've fired the game up so it's automatically a lost sale. I'd call that faulty logic, however.

In my world, however, lending a game to someone or giving a game to someone after you've bought it, isn't even remotely close to piracy. It can lead to a lost sale, sure, but that is not even in the same ballpark as piracy. Most people define piracy as "making illegal copies", aka "copyright infringement". Transferring ownership of a copyrighted material, either temporary or permanently, isn't illegal last time I checked.

But honestly, has nobody ever borrowed a game from a friend, found out that the game does indeed rock, so you go out and buy it for yourself because your friend is nagging you to get his game back so HE can play it?

I agree, but isn't that the same unquantifiable situation as piracy?  Will someone who borrows a game buy it on their own if it wasn't available from a friend?  Would a pirate buy a game if it wasn't available online?

[NiX]

I agree, but isn't that the same unquantifiable situation as piracy?  Will someone who borrows a game buy it on their own if it wasn't available from a friend?  Would a pirate buy a game if it wasn't available online?

This is more or less where I was going with this, but still wanted to know what qualified the use of sales data. There have been times where I have borrowed a game and ended up buying it, but in most cases of me purchasing a game I was on the fence about, in some cases piracy led to the sale.

But what's this about SoaSE? I thought it was goo that was the poster-child for how bad piracy was these days.

Depends on how you look at it. They didn't put any copy protection and sold 500,000 units (or more.) It was highly pirated, but that goes without saying for most good PC games out there.

[rk47]

http://twitter.com/Ubisoft/statuses/10166866294

lol Can't play single player due to online server down. Wtf. Ass Creed

[Azazel]

What? Again?

[Musashi]

So I bet there are gamers out there who get mad they bought this game.  I bet they return it.  I'm wondering.  Since AC2 is for XBox, those returns are going to be put back on the self at the EBStop and resold as used.  Do those count as lost sales?  I mean the ones specifically returned because of this denial of service.  I'm just wondering.  Where do the bean counters stand on that?

All this can go away if Jade Raymond gives the internet what it wants.

[Azazel]

You appear slightly confused. The XBox one is like any other Xbox game. The nerdrage, etc is over the PC version.

[rk47]

Yeah it's for the PC version mainly. The only way to play the game while their online verification server is down....is to download a crack. LMAO.

[Musashi]

Oh, I thought they DDoSed the DRM server and fucked the console people too.  Either way, Raymond, you know what to do.

[tgr]

Oh, I thought they DDoSed the DRM server and fucked the console people too.  Either way, Raymond, you know what to do.

No, no, it's just the PC gamers that are the üntermenschen so far. They'll probably move on to the console in due time, however. Can't have all those lost sales to piracy and games resale, you know.

[Ratman_tf]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgFdwFKDhiE

[Azazel]

Oh, I thought they DDoSed the DRM server and fucked the console people too.  Either way, Raymond, you know what to do.

She's not going to strip for you. You'll have to be content with the very small amount of other free porn accessable on the internet.

[UnSub]

I didn't say it was piracy, I asked why sales are mentioned.

Because there's no other way that piracy can be made to resemble actual theft.  If someone steals a loaf of bread, the store has lost a loaf of bread, and this is easy to understand.  If someone copies a piece of software, the only thing the store has lost is a possible sale.  Someone trying to make the case that piracy equals theft has to make the case that the lost sale is real and has a tangible value that has been transferred from its rightful owner to someone else.

Piracy leads to a Schodinger's Cat issue of a pirated copy both costing and not costing a sale. The only way it can be determined if a pirated copy cost a sale is to know the alternate state if the pirated version wasn't available, which is near impossible to do.

Does piracy reduce sales of titles? Yes. The exact extent of the loss is impossible to determine though. The other issue is that a number of AAA titles will still sell exceptionally well, even without DRM. Spore sold well, despite being crowned "the most pirated game in history". Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age didn't have DRM of note and all sold well (plus they had console sales too... and both Bethseda and BioWare are heading towards MMOs as well). I've got an hypothesis that piracy hits the sub-AAA titles the hardest, raising the barriers to making them a success, which means that publishers increasingly stick to 'sure things' like established IPs or majorly hyped AAA titles... but I'm not sure I can prove it. (By AAA, I mean development budget.)

Do pirated copies have tangible value? Yes. It is a pretty clear case if I'm buying a DVD in a plastic sleeve off the streets of Bali, but a little less defined if I just grab it from a torrent site. I suppose you could measure 'tangible value' if someone was using services intended for those legitimate purchasers, but it is less clear.

Anyway, we are into "can you steal an idea?" territory. Which you can, there are lots of caveats / loopholes because an idea / IP isn't a tangible object.

As for DRMing the console versions: only if they can openly connect to the internet.

[Lantyssa]

I've got an hypothesis that piracy hits the sub-AAA titles the hardest, raising the barriers to making them a success, which means that publishers increasingly stick to 'sure things' like established IPs or majorly hyped AAA titles... but I'm not sure I can prove it. (By AAA, I mean development budget.)

I'd hypothesize that pirating of sub-AAA titles which no one would know about gives them more publicity than they can afford with their own marketing.  If it is a good title it will make money from the interest generated.  If it's a crap title then they wouldn't have generated those sales from positive word of mouth.

[Samwise]

Spore sold well, despite being crowned "the most pirated game in history".

So games that make a lot of money also get pirated a lot... therefore if a game gets pirated a lot it will not make lots of money?

We've been here before, but you're basically assuming a tangible cost to sales that results from piracy and then casually saying that a game sold well "despite piracy" when the statistics don't agree with you.  It's no more scientific than using anecdotal evidence to prove that piracy is good for sales.

[UnSub]

So games that make a lot of money also get pirated a lot... therefore if a game gets pirated a lot it will not make lots of money?

Some games that get pirated a lot still make lots of money. The two aren't mutually exclusive. However, piracy does reduce the pool of people looking to buy a title (because, again, if you have a working version of the game it is highly unlikely you'll buy another one to go legit without significant other motivation like added services) which in turn reduces the potential for titles to break even. We already know that most video games aren't profitable with only about 20% of titles on the shelf bringing in more than they cost to develop. This is why I said I think that AAA titles can probably be piracy resistant enough to sell enough copies - they have enough hype and push behind them to reach gamers who wouldn't pirate it. Sub-AAA titles have a much tougher time of attracting buyers and that's before piracy comes along and takes part of their potential market.

Piracy adds to these barriers of achieving profitability. Although it is easy to say, "Just make better games to sell more copies" there are certainly games that were good but didn't sell and bad games that fly off the shelves.

My personal perspective on the costs of piracy is that I used to have a Commodore Amiga 500, a platform and company who's demise was certainly helped along by massive piracy of its titles, especially in the US. I'm not going to say that piracy killed Commodore, because there were particular management decisions that didn't help, but piracy certainly dropped the threshold in which mistakes from Commodore meant the end of the company.

All in all, it is pretty much impossible to say that piracy is directly responsible for much, despite titles being torrented millions of times. I can't prove that Spore would have been more profitable without piracy, or without DRM for that matter, nor can I prove that a small studio who closed its doors did so simply because their title was widely pirated. No-one trusts any numbers in this area for a mix of methodological and ideological reasons. However, I do see piracy as comparable (bad internet analogy time!) to a persistent virus - it might not kill you, but it makes you susceptible to other problems that come up.

Some DRM may be the cure that equals the disease, of course.

[Ratman_tf]

I agree with everything you said, UnSub. My frustration is with companies that point to piracy as a scapegoat for their problems. It's a problem, but there seem to be companies who manage to survive and thrive even though piracy exists. If there were some magical DRM that make games unpiratable  and had no further impact on the user, I'd be completely for it.

[Musashi]

Piracy adds to these barriers of achieving profitability. Although it is easy to say, "Just make better games to sell more copies" there are certainly games that were good but didn't sell and bad games that fly off the shelves.

I can't help but think that in the past few posts you've made, you've mis-characterized what I said earlier in the thread in an attempt to get me to pop out and challenge you.  Well here I am, successfully trolled.

What I did say was that more valuable games get pirated less.  You've somehow translated that to good, and then jumped to quality having little to do with what gets pirated.  Which is probably true, but not what I said.  Value means more than just quality.  I think I spelled it out pretty well earlier in the thread.

You seem to imply that if we don't stop pirates by any means necessary, it's the end of the PC gaming era.  But you're just taking it too far.  It will undoubtedly hurt some companies, as they will persist with the shit they've been shoveling for the past twenty years with ever increasingly draconian security measures.  And those companies will continue to lose share to companies that have figured out that building in value is more important than pure bombastic gameplay hype.  I will continue to buy games I think are worth it, and play them on my PC.  Sky is not falling, Chicken Little.

But you're right in that it is easy to say, "Just make more valuable games to increase profitability."  I know it's not as easy to do, and I already admitted so in this thread.  But what you're saying (DRM is okay because it helps sales in the face of piracy) just compounds the difficulty of getting my otherwise very salient message across by completely obfuscating it's inherent truth: A product worth buying curbs piracy much more effectively than DRM. 

Hell I don't even care about DRM if the game is worth it.  I'd buy a game from somebody who I know will give me my money's worth - even if they decide they need to use DRM.  But I have yet to find a game with DRM that wasn't either hiding a catastrophic shortcoming (Hi Spore!), or totally bereft of value.  After a while you have to stop and wonder why that is.  If you can't manage to give me a game that's worth my money, then pirates aren't the problem.

Actually!  I bought Space Rangers.  I can't honestly say its DRM was hiding a catastrophic shortcoming or the game was bereft of value, because the DRM prevented it from working on my PC.  Good times.

[tgr]

Earlier this week we advised members of the forums that Ubisoft was working on a plan to compensate those affected by the recent OSP server downtime.

Ubisoft have started sending out emails to those affected by the downtime so we would ask affected players to keep an eye on your email, not forgetting your spam folders etc.

This is a single-player game, where the full price has been paid. Exactly how are they "compensating those affected by the recent OSP server downtime"? Anyone know?

[Tebonas]

Free DLC?

Really, this is a PR nightmare anyway. I don't know why they even bother. They have the money and everybody burnt that way wil think twice buying another game with that DRM.

[tgr]

I see a new way of getting value for your money with UBI if that'd be the case. Buy tons of their games, initiate DDoS against their servers, get more content a few weeks later.

[Ollie]

As a potential customer who passed on AC2's PC version solely because of the DRM, I find it really hard to sympathise with UBI's DDoS plight. Sure, this is all anecdotal and I don't claim to speak for any significant market segment, but here it is: UBI has actually created a situation where it's far more appealing to consider pirating the game than it is to purchase a legitimate copy.

"The carrot is still in development, in the meantime, please enjoy stick instead."

Well done. 

[Azazel]

[Kitsune]

Well, DRM works: I didn't pirate Ubisoft's games.  Of course, I didn't buy them, either, but they seem to care much more about who doesn't steal the game than about who does buy it, so I guess that's a win in their book.

[tgr]

I couldn't be arsed to make a new thread over this, so I'll inject it here.

Apparently Ubisoft's taken settlers 7 even further online:

Changes in Version 1.01

Improvements
- Facebook and Twitter features implemented
- Increased multiplayer stability
- Fixed various balancing issues
- Fixes localization issues

Bug Fixes
- Fixed various problems with the savegame option
- Fixed problems with online profile storage
- Fixed crashes related to street upgrade
- Fixed crashes in map forge
- Fixed a lot of minor bugs

Additional
If you are behind a proxy and would like to use the Facebook features, add the following entries under [System] in your options.ini (find it here: C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents\Settlers7\Options.ini):

[System]
WebProxyHost = xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
WebProxyPort = xxxx
WebProxyUsername = someName (optional)
WebProxyPassword = somePassword (optional)

I bolded the funny bit.