According to Ubisoft, piracy has been such a problem for them on the PC that they are dropping their current PC model in order to enter the free-to-play model.
The company blames piracy for all the problems they have encountered with the platform stating they have suffered close to a 95% piracy rate and they are barely making any money from the games released on the PC.
While they are not expecting a larger percentage of people to suddenly buy their games once they become free-to-play, the company did state it will provide more long term revenues. According to their data, only 5-7% of all users in the free-to-play model actually pay to unlock everything which is roughly the same percentage of users who don't pirate PC games.
Quote:
"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," he told Eurogamer. "It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it's only around 5-7% of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about 5-7% who pay anyway, the rest is pirated.
"It's around a 93-95% 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."
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The company however did not take any blame for their DRM on the platform which is notorious for crashing or not working at all which ends up leaving legitimate customers unable to play the game or have to download an illegal copy just to play.
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...eir-pc-titles/
http://www.destructoid.com/ubisoft-c...e-233588.phtml
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Daily Recap:
1) The developers of the Wipeout series, Psygnosis, will be shutting down soon due to Sony currently in a restructuring phase for their entire UK branch. Psygnosis was rumored to have been developing the next Wipeout meant for the PS4 before being shut down.
http://www.destructoid.com/wipeout-d...d-233607.phtml
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...ore-it-closed/
2) Interplay announces they are reviving former Black Isle Studios, which closed in 2003 and creators of the original Fallout and Baldur’s Gate series, to help develop a new rpg gaming project.
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/interp...parently/4331/
3) According to the executive vice president of EA, retail games will be gone within the next 10 years in favor of just digital distribution with EA planning to go all digital as a way to save costs on production for physical games.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-says-ea-exec/
http://gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=183849