Hey Ubi, consider this...

[wetwarev7]

(I know, this isn't Ubisofts website, but they have very good ears here)
You know, when stores lose lots of money due to shoplifting, they usually bump the prices up on everything else a bit so the paying customers make up the difference. Not so great for the customer, but it is an established and accepted practice.

Considering that I've always thought any of the Silent Hunter games were worth more than I paid for them (once they were patched that is), why not have a less intrusive protection validation system and just charge a bit more based on how much you guesstimate your loss to be?

Let's do some math. I don't know the actual figures, so lets get a nice range. Lets start by saying the game cost $40. You sell 10,000 copies. That's $400,000. Let's say 1% get stolen, which would be 100 copies or $4000.

1% of 10,000 = 100 copies (at $40) = $4000 loss
10,000 - 100 = 9900 copies = $396,000 sales

Ok? I didn't misplace a decimal or anything did I? Good. Let's spread that $4000 loss over the other 9900 copies that got paid for.

$4000 / 9900 = $2.475

So what if the thefts were higher, such as 10%?
10% of 10,000 = 1000 copies (at $40) = $40,000 loss
10,000 - 1000 = 9000 copies (at $40) = $360,000 sales
$40,000 / 9000 copies = $4.44

What about 1,000,000 copies and 20% theft rate?
20% of 1,000,000 = 200,000 copies (at $40) = $8,000,000 loss
1,000,000 - 200,000 = 800,000 copies (at $40) = $32,000,000 sales
$8,000,000 / 800,000 copies = $10

So, you could have charged from $2.47 to $10 extra instead of having an always online requirement.

I would have paid more for SH5 than you currently charged to avoid the always online requirement. I'd have grumbled a bit, and maybe been a bit more vocal about the bugs, but I'd have paid it and would still be willing to buy your next product. And it just seems to make more sense to charge a bit more than to commit to the financial liability of running servers 24/7.



EULA: MyIdea is trademarked by me. If you use MyIdea, any products sold using MyIdea becomes my intellectual property rights and all profits must be handed over to me. Too late, you've already read MyIdea, you can't return it, you have to agree to this now or uninstall MyIdea from your brain. You may purchase the uninstaller program for MyIdea for $100, and yes, it does look quite similar to a hammer....

[janh]

Well, a rough estimate but it carries the idea. But now add the resale of software (which in contrast to a download is always a full lost sale), you may get quite different numbers. Just what is the rate (probability) at which people resell their games? If I consider myself, then I'd say I resell about 30% of my games after about 3 weeks (the bad eggs), and about another 30% after a good year or two.

Now, do the math. Surprise? What was it all about...answer yourself.

price (x/1-x), with x= sum or each of {stolen, pirated, resales etc.}

[Sonarman]

I dont know how true the figures are but in this month's PC Format magazine (UK) they quoted the ELSPA figures rellating to Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and they looked pretty bleak for the PC Platform...

PC Sales: 300,000
PC pirated downloads: 4,100,000
Console sales: 6,000,000
Console pirated downloads: 970,000

Call of Duty was selling at a ratio of 1 PC to 10 console titles

9.78 million games were downloaded illegally in Dec 2009 alone.

What percentage of SH5 copies are stolen is anyone's guess.

[theluckyone17]

If you consider the following off-topic, you might want to read it a second time.

My favorite band is Gaelic Storm. I have a $15 Rhapsody To Go subscription, which means I stream all the music I want, or download it directly to my MP3 player. I'm not sure how much of a cut GS gets from my subscription, but it's probably not much.

Last Thursday, they played Revolution Hall in Troy, NY. Troy's better days have come and gone, and it's been described as the armpit (or worse) of the country. And yet, GS still came and played. I got off work early, camped outside the doors for an hour or so until they opened, paid $23 in cash for my ticket. Grabbed an Oatmeal Stout from the bar ($4.50, locally brewed by Brown... good stuff, by the way) and waited in the standing room only for an hour or so.

GS got up on stage, played their hearts out, ten feet from me. It was AWESOME. For a couple hours, I sang, screamed, stomped, clamped, and did the "Standing Darcy Donkey Run" with the rest of the crowd. All that hooting and hollering tore my voice out, but it was worth it.

Afterwards, I spent $25 on a t-shirt. Their new album comes out in August, and I will spend $15 on it, regardless of my Rhapsody subscription or not. Rumor is, they might hit the Irish Festival in Altamont later this summer. If they do, I'll be there. I'll buy another t-shirt (maybe two).

For those of you who don't still don't get it after reading it twice through, GS gets my hard earned cash. It's not just about the music... I already get that through Rhapsody. It's because they've earned my fanaticism... if that's a word. They're great live entertainers. They provide additional products alongside their music that can't be pirated (haven't heard of someone on the black market selling GS t-shirts, at least ).

So c'mon, Ubi... there's a whole forum full of fanatics that love SH. That should be evident. Step up to the plate, and find some way to separate us from our cash in a way that makes me feel like GS does... like you earned it!

[Takao]

theluckyone17,

Ubi has come up with a way to separate you from your cash
Its called Silent Hunter V!

1/2 a game for full price! No Type II, IX, or XXI. Game ends in'43, when the war ended in '45. Its SHIII with prettier graphics, but a lot less content, Big deal...

If I wanted to play a Type VII only game I'd play "Danger from the Deep", and its free!

That's why I voted with my wallet. As much as I enjoyed SHIII and SHIV, I have no motivation to play SHV.



wetwarev7,

Average retail markup is about 50%. So if local big box store is charging $50 for a hard copy, Ubi is probably only seeing $25 or less. Having helped run a gaming store, long since defunct, we would get games from a wholesaler for, say $20, then sell them for $40. So, if the wholesaler was marking up the games at 50%, then the gaming company would be selling them at $10. Although, i don't know what wholesalers mark up their product at. Also, I don't know if the big box stores are going through a wholesaler or dealing directly with Ubi. Still, I don't see Ubi getting $40 as their cut on a game. Finally, I don't know what the business model is for downloaded games. How is that cash spread around, seeing that it is just data being transferred, with no real hard copy to produce, box, and ship. You would think downloaded games would be much cheaper than they are, since your cutting out the middle man and there is little overhead concerning production costs of a product.

[kylania]

Originally Posted by theluckyone17

They provide additional products alongside their music that can't be pirated (haven't heard of someone on the black market selling GS t-shirts, at least ).

That's really the key to fighting piracy of games, music, movies and whatever else. Give us something that MAKES us want to buy a product and we will. Treat us like criminals and constantly slap us in the face with "don't pirate this or else" warnings and restrictions and we won't WANT to buy the product.

If every game came with a nice solid quality and accurate manual instead of a slip of paper telling us to read the childishly horrific PDF, real cloth maps instead of tatters of string loosely glued together, laminated keymaps instead of tissue paper sheets and Quality Tested software instead of crunched out bug fests I bet it would do more for fighting piracy than OSP ever could hope to.

[Placoderm]

Originally Posted by kylania

That's really the key to fighting piracy of games, music, movies and whatever else. Give us something that MAKES us want to buy a product and we will. Treat us like criminals and constantly slap us in the face with "don't pirate this or else" warnings and restrictions and we won't WANT to buy the product.

If every game came with a nice solid quality and accurate manual instead of a slip of paper telling us to read the childishly horrific PDF, real cloth maps instead of tatters of string loosely glued together, laminated keymaps instead of tissue paper sheets and Quality Tested software instead of crunched out bug fests I bet it would do more for fighting piracy than OSP ever could hope to.

I Couldn't have said it better, Kylania! Thats one of the things that has continued to bug me about new releases...the total lack of any tangilbe hard goods in the package. I have literally hundreds of PC games going back to the late 1980's, and the one thing that really sticks out is the huge manuals, maps, and just plain cool stuff that came with them. Stuff you could'nt pirate...Stuff that makes me still keep the games to this day, even though I can no longer play them.

I have printed ship recognition manuals with a leather-like binding that served as copy-protection for one of them...I think it was Silent Hunter 1 or Silent Service 2 (but I am too lazy to check right now). I still use the fold-out KM map from SH3 and sometimes just for kicks I pull out the hard-back 3-ring binder that made both the manual and the packaging for Falcon 4.0.

Publishers like Ubisoft and EA Games have made it easier for the pirates by eliminating the tangible treasures that used to be considered standard in older titles...and in doing so have really hurt both the consumer and more importantly, themselves.

Pirates would generally never bother to re-print a nice thick manual...but give them a digital PDF 'manual' and "click", it's done and distributed in an instant. I really no longer fault the pirates...I fault the publishers who, out of their own laziness and greed have made the pirates job easier...and the honest consumers reward ever smaller and harder to find.

[wetwarev7]

Originally Posted by kylania

If every game came with a nice solid quality and accurate manual instead of a slip of paper telling us to read the childishly horrific PDF, real cloth maps instead of tatters of string loosely glued together, laminated keymaps instead of tissue paper sheets and Quality Tested software instead of crunched out bug fests I bet it would do more for fighting piracy than OSP ever could hope to.

I think this is a really good point. One of the reasons I buy games a the store instead of online is to get a paper manual. Or at least it used to be. I can't remember the last time I got an actual paper manual that discussed the game.

Anyways, without little items like a real map or paper manual, there is less incentive to buy a legit copy at a store. The reason I think this is important is that buying and downloading a game online is really only a click away from just downloading the game (without the buying).

If I were a software company, I'd stick with store sales only and include things like paper manuals, maps and pewter figurines that can't be easily transmitted over the internet.

Heck, remember when you used to have to pull up a certain page from the manual and type in word three, from paragraph four? Why not include a better version of that that can't be scanned, like a decoder ring or something?

Or heck, why not a freakin USB hardware key?

<Sigh>

[wetwarev7]

Originally Posted by Sonarman

I dont know how true the figures are but in this month's PC Format magazine (UK) they quoted the ELSPA figures rellating to Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and they looked pretty bleak for the PC Platform...

PC Sales: 300,000
PC pirated downloads: 4,100,000
Console sales: 6,000,000
Console pirated downloads: 970,000

I really, really doubt those figures are accurate. According to those numbers, that would mean 93.2% of all PC copies are pirated. That just doesn't sound very plausible.

I've said it in other threads, I'd have more sympathy for the game companies if I thought their 'figures' were accurate, or even just unbiased. I buy my games, every one of them, and I really don't think I'm in the minority.

[kylania]

Originally Posted by wetwarev7

I really, really doubt those figures are accurate. According to those numbers, that would mean 93.2% of all PC copies are pirated. That just doesn't sound very plausible.

Plausible or not, it's what they'd like you to believe.

[janh]

Originally Posted by kylania

Plausible or not, it's what they'd like you to believe.

Nice summary of the GAO article. Hopefully time for alledgements is passing an industries start to take a closer look at what they are doing. For most of them sales have dramatically increased in the last 5 years (with exception of the economic downturn year 2009), also Ubisofts. Technically they don't have anything to complain, except if they'd want to rip of customer even worse than now.

I agree that if they want(ed) to fare better (and see piracy decrease), then they should start delivering valuable products again. No "beta releases" with serious patching already expected in the first month, add manuals that are interesting, informative and even educative again, and add some nice gimmicks like a good KM-Map. Add new features to your software, instead of just polishing the graphics and thereby remove older features that people are used to from predecessors (such as other sub types, 43-45, etc). Advancement means to deliver more, not less! Or why could you expect anyone to buy a new edition of a book that lost half the original chapters???

I think software industry is whining on a very high (success) level, and it is doing so because in the past decade it hasn't be questioned, criticized or "shaken up". They have experiments with a lot of "nasty" things on customers, and they have gotten through with it. So, they learned that they can go even further...

PS. What really annoys me is actually not that they keep delivering "sub par" quality software for a quality software price. That's their problem, and they can do so as long as they can find someone to buy it. I won't, but enough people will fall for it. But if their sales suffer from that, then they ought to attribute it to the right reason (themselves), and not just point fingers at some easily attackable entity ("pirates", "used sellers",...). And then even have the loyal customers suffer this nonsense.

And I really hope we'll soon see a "2nd SHV release date" -- the no-DRM release...

[janh]

Originally Posted by Sonarman

PC Sales: 300,000
PC pirated downloads: 4,100,000
Console sales: 6,000,000
Console pirated downloads: 970,000

Regarding such "assessments", there is a very recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which provides and analysis questions for Congress.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10423.pdf

It is a long document, but even if you only read introduction, conclusions and browse the headlines, you'll find that they conclude that the loss estimates made by MPAA etc. are bare any basis. Their data sources are not reproducible, and their employed analysis methods lack. For example one very trivial statement that they characterize is that every pirated download equals a lost sale, which is just by reason evidently not true (in contrast to a resell!). So, this is official evidence that you can smoke above numbers... ;-)
I assume that piracy estimates in the 10-30% of sales volume range would be more accurate, but I would be curious if someone could try an experiment to show that even if all torrents went away today, the sales wouldn't increase much in the next year, two, three... But I assume that reselling software is a big thorn in the eye of software companies. I kind of can understand that, and I guess if I were the boss, I'd probably try to close that down too unless customers would start to rebel against it... But that doesn't make it any better!

[Morpheus]

Originally Posted by wetwarev7

EULA: MyIdea is trademarked by me. If you use MyIdea, any products sold using MyIdea becomes my intellectual property rights and all profits must be handed over to me. Too late, you've already read MyIdea, you can't return it, you have to agree to this now or uninstall MyIdea from your brain. You may purchase the uninstaller program for MyIdea for $100, and yes, it does look quite similar to a hammer....

Damn, where is the uninstall button?

[ERPP8]

Originally Posted by wetwarev7

(I know, this isn't Ubisofts website, but they have very good ears here)
You know, when stores lose lots of money due to shoplifting, they usually bump the prices up on everything else a bit so the paying customers make up the difference. Not so great for the customer, but it is an established and accepted practice.

Considering that I've always thought any of the Silent Hunter games were worth more than I paid for them (once they were patched that is), why not have a less intrusive protection validation system and just charge a bit more based on how much you guesstimate your loss to be?

Let's do some math. I don't know the actual figures, so lets get a nice range. Lets start by saying the game cost $40. You sell 10,000 copies. That's $400,000. Let's say 1% get stolen, which would be 100 copies or $4000.

1% of 10,000 = 100 copies (at $40) = $4000 loss
10,000 - 100 = 9900 copies = $396,000 sales

Ok? I didn't misplace a decimal or anything did I? Good. Let's spread that $4000 loss over the other 9900 copies that got paid for.

$4000 / 9900 = $2.475

So what if the thefts were higher, such as 10%?
10% of 10,000 = 1000 copies (at $40) = $40,000 loss
10,000 - 1000 = 9000 copies (at $40) = $360,000 sales
$40,000 / 9000 copies = $4.44

What about 1,000,000 copies and 20% theft rate?
20% of 1,000,000 = 200,000 copies (at $40) = $8,000,000 loss
1,000,000 - 200,000 = 800,000 copies (at $40) = $32,000,000 sales
$8,000,000 / 800,000 copies = $10

So, you could have charged from $2.47 to $10 extra instead of having an always online requirement.

I would have paid more for SH5 than you currently charged to avoid the always online requirement. I'd have grumbled a bit, and maybe been a bit more vocal about the bugs, but I'd have paid it and would still be willing to buy your next product. And it just seems to make more sense to charge a bit more than to commit to the financial liability of running servers 24/7.



EULA: MyIdea is trademarked by me. If you use MyIdea, any products sold using MyIdea becomes my intellectual property rights and all profits must be handed over to me. Too late, you've already read MyIdea, you can't return it, you have to agree to this now or uninstall MyIdea from your brain. You may purchase the uninstaller program for MyIdea for $100, and yes, it does look quite similar to a hammer....

Nerd




Just kidding

[Adriatico]

After AC2... the Settlers are also "DRM liberated" these days...
maybe it's time for Ubi to stop this mockery and apologize to it's real clients base... while black market is having fun and enjoying AC2 and Settlers.