The post apocalyptic survival game I am Alive by Ubisoft Shanghai and published by Ubisoft is coming out next month on the PC, five months after it’s debut on XBLA on April 7th. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as many Ubisoft games come out later on the PC compared to the console counterparts. This isn’t due to a problem with developing for the different systems, as Windows and Xbox development are very similar, to the point where 4chan’s /v/ board got Skyrim DLC Dawnguard’s Xbox version that released 30 days earlier working on the PC.
So why does Ubisoft do this? Well, Ubisoft has been known to delay PC releases for most, if not all of their games, and recently in an interview the Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was quoted saying “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”.
Now, PC pirating is nothing to joke about. PC games are much easier to pirate compared to console games, but still overall, the processes is painstaking to pirate a game for your PC. Gabe Newell (The god of the internet and also happens to be the CEO of Valve) once said that “The people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia” and that “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work, It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates”. Ubisoft tends to treat the PC market like it’s filled with thieving people, when Valve has proven the opposite.
So will Ubisoft stop their shenanigans of delaying PC ports, or shall it only get worse?
-From the Basement of Alex_N
Retrospect Realm 