Ubisoft: PC piracy at 95%, free-to-play is “the way to do it”

Ubisoft is betting heavily on free-to-play and now its CEO Yves Guillemot compares the virtues of F2P against the astonishing piracy rate for PC games.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Guillemot said “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.”

Guillemot throws a shocking 93-95 per cent piracy rate on PC, adding that only five to seven per cent players pay for F2P, “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.”

However, Guillemot doesn’t explicitly say that free-to-play is the future, since with the new consoles not so far away, Ubisoft and others need to be careful about this ever-evolving market.

Ubisoft recently launched the F2P shooter Ghost Recon Online and announced during the Gamescom 2012 the new browser-based games Anno Online, Might and Magic Heroes Online and Might and Magic Raiders.