Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillmot has described the seriousness of piracy on PC, with the publisher currently experiencing a 93-95% piracy rate.
In a recent interview with GamesIndustry International at Gamescom, Guillemot explained the situation, and elaborated on how it has affected his company's thinking as they look to expand their portfolio of games on PC. "We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it. 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."
"It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 per cent 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."
Guillemot also discussed how Ubisoft plans on making free-to-play games more cost-effective to produce: ""We also take content which we've developed in the past, graphics etc, and we can make cheaper games and improve them over time. What's very important is that we change the content and make it a better fit to the customer as time goes on."