ubisoft should get used to players no longer owning their games
Not to be that guy who defends Ubisoft (God knows I haven’t bought one of their games in ages), but that quote from the CEO is taken way out of context.
He was directly asked what would need to happen for game streaming to take off, and he responded with “players would need to get used to no longer owning their games”, which is pretty much true as far as answers to that question go.
Companies spend far more on anti piracy for single-player games than they would make if all those stolen copies were legit sales. It’s a power thing
Oh there’s a whole Wikipedia page on the subject
People always say this, but has there ever been a good proof? Bear in mind, individuals are often not truthful when stating “I wouldn’t have bought it anyway”.
The closest I’ve seen was a sports game; since they release each year with updates, sales numbers are often steady and reliable. The year they added an antipiracy measure no one could breach, their sales jumped by a significant factor, supposedly because they had pirates now pressured into buying it. With a bit more time, I could find the article link.
Here’s an article that ars just posted yesterday in fact about that.
Tldr some group states that piracy affects company’s bottom lines by up to 20%. They also state that since game sales figures are almost never published, they had to derive a replacement by using reviews and active player count. To me that just kinda invalidates the whole thing because who the hell knows what the actual relationship is between those variables, and especially when it’s making such a gargantuan claim that pirates are taking such large chunks of cash from developers pockets. If companies want to show they really are being hampered by piracy to such a degree, they should post their actual books and stop hiding key information.
I don’t doubt plenty of pirates are doubting the legitimacy of those studies, if just for selfish “my entertainment relies on my not believing this” reasons.
That said, companies also don’t have much to gain by winning internet arguments. Their exact sales data is often very valuable information - something they actively work to safeguard. Thus, you only get vague selective metrics when they want to show harm from pirates.
fifa? don’t people joke about every game being the same?
They do - which I happily mock the same as other people. But it still means it’s a sample situation where just about every other variable remained the same. Nothing else could easily explain the jump in sales.
People spend way more money on locks and security than anyone ever steals. It makes no sense at all.
more money on locks and security than anyone ever steals.
Many more things would go “walkies” if that money hadn’t been spent, the argument is therefore moot.
Both of them, in fact.
Sorry Ubisoft, I’m not buying some of your almost decade-old game that still has Denuvo.
If you don’t put your old games that made the bulk of their money a long time ago on GOG, I won’t buy it.
It never was, only a corrupt judge can reach that conclusion. Stealing is subtracting an item from one person and adding it to another person, if there are two copies of the item then it’s not stealing.
What?! Forging money isn’t stealing?
Man and I always thought that it is the same as piracy
No, it’s Forging.
Money is not an object, it’s a concept. Also when you forge money you devalue the whole currency therefore subtracting it from everyone. You could argue that pirating a game devalues it, but then I ask you is the game that you paid for any worse because Joe Schmoe made a copy?
Is the dollar any “worse” because someone copied it?
Or, is its scarcity and trade valuation reduced because someone copied it?
Try living in a third world country that prints hundreds of its own Trillion Dollar bills every week, and see what you think of it.
that has nothing to do with games. the value of a game comes from enjoying it, not from trading it away. it can be scarce or abundant. wouldn’t change a thing. the analogy doesn’t work.
If you’re the guy that developed a game, you only get so much enjoyment from playing it - and most of your enjoyment from selling 1,000 copies of it to feed your crippling addiction to novelty PEZ dispensers (and paying rent).
On that note, if an indie developer tries to popularize his niche “aardvark slapping game” by selling it for 10 cents a copy, he might quickly flood the entire limited base of consumers that wants to simulate slapping aardvarks, and only makes $100 in the process. By destroying his game’s scarcity, even though he discovered an eager niche, he can no longer sell copies at his original price of $5 each - enough to pay rent for the month. That’s how scarcity of a game can be valuable.
You’re talking about a product. I’m talking about art. You’re arguing that free games have no value. I’m arguing that they do and price has no bearing on the value of an art piece.
I’m arguing no such thing. Artists can, but don’t always, choose to be generous with the product they make, just like bakers sometimes give extra loaves to homeless people. Would it be true to say that free food has no value? In either case it’s an act of generosity. Bakers and artists can both choose to set whatever valuation/price they want on their work, and can adjust if their chosen price point doesn’t make enough sales for their goals. It so happens many artists already have enough money, and simply want people to enjoy their work, or spread their name. The vast majority of artists don’t have enough money, hence the sardonic meme of the starving artist.
I still got these Burt Bucks after the crash.
Forging $1 doesn’t remove $1 from everyone else.
If someone forged 80 quintillion dollars, it would remove the usefulness of $1 from everyone else. (and that is in fact the economic fear that’s generated through excess inflation, something that has happened in many countries)
Well, The FED has “forged” 9 trillion USD but apparently that increased the usefulness of everyone’s dollars.
It can already not be stealing since that requires the stolen object to be in fact a physical (and a moveable one at that) object. Stealing non-physical property does constitute a crime, but it’s not stealing.
Note: this is very specific to your country of origin and may not be true for your country or the applicable law in the case of international crime
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lol as if ubisoft games are worth pirating. I pay for my internet connection and I’d rather use it on something that isn’t slop
They have a few indie titles that are fun.
I really liked Grow Home and Grow Upthere’s a small rebel group inside ubi who escaped the rituals where the rest sold their souls to Satan. they made things like rayman and the prince metroidvania… I don’t think of them though when i think ubi tbh.
Ubisoft execs are correct, gamers need to get used to not owning Ubisoft games (or purchasing them, heck they’re not worth the storage space to pirate.)
Think of the time you’ll save too!
They can start AI generating games and no one will notice
Old-fashioned high seas pirating may have been stealing, but the modern copyright infringement form has never been stealing.
A key aspect of stealing is that you’re depriving the owner of some kind of property. While you have that property, they don’t, and they can’t use it. Copyright infringement doesn’t deprive the owner of anything. The only thing they lose is the government-granted monopoly over the right to distribute that “idea”. If copyright infringement is like an old fashioned crime, it’s like trespassing. The government granted someone the right to control who has access to some land, and a trespasser violates that law.
I wish piracy was stealing, I want to constantly download Ubisofts games until they go bankrupt
I suppose that is true if you download the from their site.
Now wait a damn minute.
So what? A company pays devs, story writers, testers, etc etc to build a game over the course of months or years, and then they release copy 1 which pirate cracker 1 promptly buys.
You, every nitwit in this thread, and everyone else then take a “ToTalLy FreE” copy (“it’s not stealing” so who cares?!) because obv developer is not out anything. And then? What?
Who recoops the game cost? How is it determined whether or not to make a sequel if some angel donor covers total cost? It makes no fucking sense.
Sure, Ubisoft sucks, no complaint. But just because it’s digital doesn’t mean this brain rot is universally true. It’s like some perverse form of libertarianism: I don’t want to pay any taxes or tolls or whatever, but I wanna use all your shit. Every pirate here laughs and says “I got mine” but you’re a bunch of moochers who try to convince yourselves you’re in the right instead of thanking those of us actually buying the content.
I’ve sailed the seas in my day, but I never got it in my head it was a totally cool and reasonable victimless action. You can say “I couldn’t have afforded it anyway”, but that argument isnt universal and it doesn’t make everyone entitled to a free lunch.
Your line of reasoning is exactly the same as if a company – for the sake of argument, let’s say Ubisoft for absolutely no particular reason whatsoever – made a shitty product that no one actually wanted to buy, and therefore only sold six copies.
Who “recoups” the cost then? Nobody. That’s called the inherent risk of operating a business.
It’s also why indie developers in this day and age typically wind up considerably more successful for both themselves and their employees, because they don’t need to outlay the enormous bloated expenditures of the AAA studios and publishers, nor go to such extreme lengths to desperately rake in enough revenue to break even.
If they make a shitty title, the company is forced to eat it. After multiples of those, they go out of business because they can’t pay devs.
The counter argument is what? That game sucks so I deserve a copy? There is no reason to freeload off of either one. Sure sail the seas if you have to, but claiming you’re in the right to do so no matter what is pants on head stupid.
Or, what if a government granted a monopoly on sidewalks within the city to SideWalking Inc. SideWalking spent all kinds of money setting up turnstiles all over the busiest sidewalks equipped with NFC readers, then ran an ad campaign telling people where to buy their sidewalk authorization cards, etc. And then they realized that people were just hopping over the turnstiles! Who recoups the cost to put up all the turnstiles and install all the NFC readers?
The only thing media producers [Party A] is deprived of is a little bit of money they feel entitled to every time [Party B] appreciates & consumes A’s media. If hundreds & thousands of B’s are appreciating & consuming A’s media, the financial losses begin to add up after A put so much work, effort, training, time, passion & resources into it, only to not get paid for all that effort.
How would you feel if you worked your ass off at work then didn’t get paid because your employer felt invisible & untraceable and felt like they could get away with not paying you?
How would I feel if I produced a lot of value and my employer gave me only part of it while keeping the rest for themselves because they can get away with it?
Like 99% of people
Hire your own people and make your own shit. You are now an indie game dev.
If everybody is pirating your shit, it’s not making any value and nobody who worked on it gets anything at all. And anyone who IS paying I guess is just a sucker? Not the real heroes carrying your mooching ass to every game you want to play?
The only thing media producers [Party A] is deprived of is a little bit of money
No, the media producers aren’t deprived of money, they’re deprived of control. They often do use that control to make money.
If hundreds & thousands of B’s are appreciating & consuming A’s media, the financial losses begin to add up
There are no losses. There may be missed opportunities to make sales, but that isn’t the same thing as losses.
A put so much work, effort, training, time, passion
Sure, “passion”. I’m sure that a lot of people pirate things passionately too.
As for how I’d feel? I’d probably feel bad if I depended on the current crooked copyright system to make money and then I wasn’t making as much money as I hoped. But, that doesn’t make the current crooked copyright system right. Similarly, if I were a manor lord in the middle ages and depended on peasants to work my land and the peasants ran away, I’d feel like I was being cheated. That doesn’t mean that that was a good system either.
Interesting how you quoted “work, effort, training, time, and passion,” while you conveniently disregarded the “work, effort, training and time” that media producers invest. You think they don’t deserve to earn money for their work & effort & training & time?
Do you feel that YOU deserve to get paid for your work & effort & training & time?
I know you think you already answered that question, but you really didn’t. So I’ll ask you again:
Do you feel like YOU deserve to get paid for your work & effort & training & time?
Do you feel like YOU deserve to get paid for your work & effort & training & time?
No, I deserve to be paid what people have agreed to pay me. The work and effort and so-on is irrelevant.
Understandable. So what if people don’t agree to pay you but want your product anyway? That’s what we’re dealing with here.
By “product” do you mean idea?
We’re talking about people pirating movies and video games and music. That’s the product. And it applies to anything. If I want something, I need to pay for it. That’s how the world works.
I have 2TB of music and 7TB of videos but I rarely pirate a game.
Almost never, sometimes I’m extremely interested in something but want to try it out first. Games are such time sinks that if I can’t shell out $20, then I have bigger problems and probably shouldn’t be playing it.
That said, I get a lot of content isn’t available in some countries and piracy is the only way some people can experience something, so, different strokes.
I can see the other argument though I don’t agree with it.
Paying is obtaining a license to use a product. You own the license for as long as that payment is valid. If the validity of the license expires for some reason, you no longer have rights to use the product, whether you physically have it or not.
The difference is in licensing. Having a license to use a product that someone else created.
This is becoming a much more prevalent theme especially in computing. With physical goods, for the most part, ownership/possession of the item implies that you own the required rights to operate, use, or otherwise possess that item. Usually a license doesn’t physically exist, it’s more of a concept that is inexorably tied to the thing. With software however, the idea of license keys exists. If you have a license key for software, you can use the software regardless of where you got it from. Since the software can be copied, moved, duplicated, etc. The source of the actual bits the compose the software that runs doesn’t matter. As long as you have a valid license key, you “own” a valid license to use the software which you paid for.
With online platforms, including, but not limited to, steam, epic Games store, Ubisoft connect, whatever… They manage your licenses, and coordinate downloads for you, etc. The one thing I’m aware of with steam that’s a benefit here is that you can get your product keys from the program and store them separately if you wish.
The problem is that not all platforms support the same format of product keys, especially for games. There’s no universal licensing standard. This makes it tricky to have a product key that works where you want it to.
There’s layers to this, and bluntly, unless there’s wording in the license agreement that it can be revoked, terminated, invalidated, or otherwise made non-functional at the discretion of the developer that issued it, they actually can’t revoke your ownership of a game, or at least the license for that game.
Application piracy (specifically for games), is when you play something without a license to do so.
They’ve stacked the entire system against you. Using wording in their license agreements that allows them to invalidate your license whenever they want to, and gives you no means to appeal that decision. Setting you up for litigation for piracy by using a software that you paid for when that license is revoked.
It’s an insane thing to happen in my mind and there should be legislation put in place that obligates companies to offer a permanent, and irrevocable, license to software (looking at you Adobe), and also makes it much harder for companies to revoke that license. In addition, there should be a standardized licensing system, owned and operated independently from the license issuers, which manages and oversees the distribution, authentication and authorization of those licenses for them and you, something like humble bundle’s system or something, where you can get license keys compatible with various platforms which can supply the software that constitutes the game you have a license for.
It should go beyond gaming.
Until such a time that the legal part of this is figured out, we’ll be left with an unfair playing field, legally speaking, and piracy will be a way to have the software without a license (which is arguably illegal).
I don’t like this system. I didn’t ask for it. I think it should change. But legally, piracy is still illegal. The system is consumer hostile, and unfair. That fact, in and of itself, should merit something to be done about it. So far, nothing has even been proposed by governments. I’m hoping the EU makes the first move on this, and everyone follows suit. I can see them doing it too.
I think the point of the saying is that they don’t recognize the licensing a consumer product as a valid exchange of money for goods or services.
Or we just go back to the old way; where a company sells a product and consumers just own it. Why does a static piece of software/video require a license? Updates used to be optional, but then company’s started selling broken stuff and writing out exclusions until we had no other options.
I’m not opposed to the idea, but license keys for software have existed for a very long time.
License keys also don’t always represent an application or software, they extend the rights of use beyond the initial purchase.
As a simple example, you can get license keys for Windows that do not change what version of Windows is installed or how it operates. I work in IT, and when setting up remote access systems, we need to buy remote desktop license keys to allow users to connect. You’re not getting anything you couldn’t otherwise, but you’re allowed to have more people connected at a time while the system is running.
There’s similar examples across the board, this is just one that’s pretty fresh in my mind right now. One of my clients is hitting the limit of their RD licensing.
For less complex software, like games, there used to be a physical component, usually an installer disk or something that would need to be validated when the game launches (though disk burning made this ineffective). With digital resources it’s nearly impossible to validate someone has a licence without some kind of license key system in place.
I’ll say again, I see their argument here. I don’t necessarily agree with any of it.
IMO, it’s a challenging subject, and one that we the people, via our elected representatives, should be pushing for legal representation on, by implementing laws that govern how all this works and limiting how much companies like Ubisoft can fuck us over because it’s Tuesday, and that made them mad.
The old way was that you owned a disc or cartridge (or cassette tape) with an instance of the program on it. That’s going to need a new definition that everyone can agree on.
Yeah a disc or cartridge with a license attached to it. So if you sold the disc you also sold the license. With digital distribution if you sell the files and transfer it to someone you technically made a copy. Which is not allowed since you don’t own the copyright.
…sort of. If your disc got scratched that somehow destroyed your license, and you had to buy another one.
Because the makers aren’t selling you the software or the video. They are selling you the rights to consume it. The reason for that is that software, movies and books can be easily copied and redistributed.
When that stuff was on a physical medium it was also sold with the same license. You would own the disc/tape/book with the license but you wouldn’t own the movie, software or literary work. You can sell the disc with the license but you can’t take the content of the disc and sell it separately since that is technically copying and you don’t own the copyright.
I’m not pirating, I’m merely copying data without involving license transfers and subscription platforms.
why did i think pic 2 would say “adobe ceos”?
Okay, but if I send you an unsolicited dick pick, who owns the rights?
Stream is the one now forced to label change if you’ve missed recent events
“No your honour, I liberated it”
Try to pirate the Crew. Or Steep. You can’t, since they rely on a central server.
The Crew server side is being reverse engineered so you can eventually play it in the future.
How many games like this will receive such a server emulator. Piracy won’t stop games from being killed. Policy will.
https://knockout.chat/thread/49305
Test Drive Unlimited 2 in particular is one I use on occasion. https://www.tduworld.com/
The old wii, wii u, ds and 3ds servers have been reverse engineered so I can even do pokemon trades on DS today
Those were whole (partly: very popular) platforms. Not really comparable to Steep, or similar games.
