Yesterday Ubisoft, the publisher behind games such as Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry 2, held an earnings call which saw the company’s CEO Yves Guillemot discuss his thoughts on piracy and how it affects the various major gaming platforms.
Shacknews documented Guillemot’s piracy talk.
Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
Unsurprisingly, Guillemot did not express much concern about piracy on these two platforms. Both consoles require modified hardware to run pirated games, and the PS3 is notoriously difficult to pirate due to the hardware and the Blu-ray disks the games are released on.
“What we see is that it’s very small on PS3. It’s actually also good on the 360 because it’s very difficult to pirate when you play the games with your machine online regularly–[Xbox 360 piracy is] a difficult thing to do because the risk is quite high.”
Going online with a modified Xbox 360 can reportedly cause damage to the console, and cases have been reported of modified Xbox 360’s severely malfunctioning after logging on to Xbox Live.
PC
Unsurprisingly Guillemot expressed serious concern about the PC as being a highly pirated platform. There are numerous ways to play pirated content on a PC thanks to the nature of the platform. Many measures have been tried over the years, from EA’s invasive DRM rootkits to general CD checks. Unfortunately for developers, none of these measures have been completely successful.
“All together, on home consoles, the piracy is low. But on the PC, the piracy increases quite a lot, and we are working on tools that will allow us to actually decrease tremendously the piracy on PC, starting next year in fact and probably one game at the end of this year.” Said Guillemot.
Wii
Guillemot’s comment on piracy on Nintendo’s Wii is indicative of the target market. Casual gamers are far less likely to modify their consoles, and piracy on the Wii is therefore understandably low.
“We see some piracy in some countries, but it’s still small.”
DS
Perhaps coming as a surprise to most SA gamers, the DS is a platform that has seen a surge in piracy, most notably in Europe according to Guillemot.
“What we are seeing in Europe, especially on the DS, is that the piracy is strong. We are working to put new figurines and new elements in the box that will change that for the future.”
PSP
Interestingly, Guillemot states that the PSP has been a victim of piracy for some time.
“It has always been a machine with lots of piracy. It’s a machine we were not developing too much on…there are new ways to control piracy [on PSP] so we have reinvested in the machine.”
It comes as no surprise that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are the two least pirated home-gaming platforms. Conversely, it is also not surprising that the PC was pin-pointed as a problem area for piracy. Unfortunately, for as long as PC piracy continues to flourish, PC gamers will be constantly marginalized by game developers.
It is becoming common, to the point of becoming the norm, to see PC games being released months after the original console games. Basic PC porting is also becoming more common, with developers obviously less inclined to invest money into full-scale PC development knowing that a large portion of their sales on the platform will be lost to piracy.
Ironically, PC gamers complain about console gamers being given preference with new releases. For as long as piracy continues to flourish on the platform, the situation will not change.
Discuss piracy in the forums
Loading ...
