Same here. Personally I actually feel a lot of sympathy for publishers when it comes to this debate and am rather disgusted by those haters and especially hate mongers on the consumer side. In fact both sides are dominated by assholes. Even if just one side was really decent, than this whole debate would be unnecessary or at last much more civilized and sophisticated and more beneficial for everyone.

The simple fact of the matter is that despite your situation PC gamers without a solid internet connection are VERY small minority. Like, so small they completely write you off, you are insignificant. I am sorry, that's just the truth.

It's called "teabagging".

http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm

Not that uncommon even in US only. Only 80 mil has broadband connection

There are still huge terrains without stable i-net connection on globe. Some of those people want to play games.

I have internet connection since 56k modems came up. But even I had several periods in my life without access to internet connection longer than a week.

Oh, and you wanna know statistics for poland?

http://www.polska20.pl/2011/01/ilu-polakow-ma-dostep-do-internetu/

around 13,5% Polish citizens have access to broadband internet connetction. 60% have access to any kind of internet connection, usually meaning unstable slow as fuck wi-fi.

This picture shows percentage of citizens who have any internet connection in EU:
[url=http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/images/3/3b/Internet_access_of_households_(%25_of_all_households).png]http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/images/3/3b/Internet_access_of_households_(%25_of_all_households).png[/url]

Please, stop being short sighted douche.

Bullshit. In most developed countries, at least 20% of the given population has no access to broadband internet and is still reliant on some kind of dial-up. That's not accounting for much of Eastern Europe and Asia, where broadband take-up is even lower.

Hell, I've just moved away from Ostholstein, where broadband penetration is ridiculously poor (we were lucky as our previous flat was right on the edge of a major city, so our ISP did manage to link us up to that and get us a very flaky 1Mbit connection, but the rest of the village and all of the surrounding villages had no broadband whatsoever). And I can assure you from living there and growing up in a rural area that the claim that "PC gamers without broadband are a minority" is at best twisting the facts, at worst utter bullshit.

I know plenty of PC gamers without broadband, some more casual, some more enthusiastic, and I can name dozens of people who have switched to console gaming over the past 3-4 years because a PC game demanding a reliable internet connection is not a realistic prospect. If there aren't many PC gamers without reliable internet, it's because they abandoned it by necessity.

Edit: Slightly ninja'd by keeveek, who covered some of my points there.

I do. Any company that spits out figures to support their case needs to back those figures up with evidence. As well, if you've made a mistake, you should acknowledge it. For all those customers that were negatively impacted by their decisions and all those that may have given up in disgust, I think an acknowledgement that you made an error is in order - and would likely go a long way toward building good will and reclaiming lost customers.

I know I personally was completely turned off by the string of evasive answers and PR speak in that interview and it just reinforces that I'll probably continue to ignore Ubisoft's games unless they appear here on GOG DRM-free at a reasonable price.

But they've flip-flopped so many times with their DRM that it's pretty much at the point where anything coming out of their mouths with respect to it is worthy of ridicule. That being said, i don't think the intent was to ridicule them anyway. I think they were just trying to see if they could actually get Ubisoft representatives to admit they erred big time with their always on-line DRM scheme - which they earlier had said was a success. This is the kind of thing that makes people skeptical and unwilling to cut them any slack.


One thing many reports often leave out of the equation for some reason is digital sales, which are (from what I've read) steadily climbing. Generally, they tend to only refer to retail sales. I don't know why that is though. No way to tell if this is the case here.

I think they actually said something to that effect not long ago, if memory serves.

Yeah, but how many of those buy videogames?

About 10% of games Ubisoft sells are for the PC. What percentage of that do you think cannot connect to the internet at least once after installing a new game? Realistically, I'd guesstimate it can't be more than 5%[1]. That makes it a whopping 0.5% of Ubi's customers who are affected by it.

[1] If you play current PC games, you must have a recently built PC. If you have a recently built PC, you are not poor. If you are not poor, you can afford a semi-decent internet connection. Also, how many people do you know with gaming-capable PCs that have never ever connected this PC to the internet?

Btw. I've corrected my post.

13,5% of Polish citizens have access to broadband connection that was required not so long ago to play some Ubisoft games.
Nope. It's not just that.

If there's no wire anywhere near you, you won't get good internet connection, even if you shit gold.

It's not that simple. Especially in villages.

And I know a lot of people from small towns and villages who have kick-ass PC but slow and unstable wi-fi connection (usually no internet connection during rains and storms, or in snowy wheater sometimes too) just because they live in low coverage area.

Last time I checked, WiFi did not need wires.

Joking aside, I know not everyone has 100% reliable broadband. Which is why I don't support always-on. But a one time online check? Come on, everyone has to be able to manage that somehow. A PC without any internet access today is just… metal.

You know, I've actually been to developed countries and work for and in them. The one thing you can be sure they got better than us is the development of the net infrastructure. Especially Eastern Europe. Tallinn has the whole city covered with free wi-fi.

For those that need internet, there is surprisingly affordable internet, even in the most f'cked up countries. It was easier for me to get a constant internet connection than running water. Not to mention clean running water.

So no, when it comes to internet and especially broadband we can learn -a lot- from the so called "developing countries"

Oh, okay.

I was making my post clearly to show how always-on DRM is wrong. Single one time activation is ok with me. Even if you don't have i-net connection at all, you may usually activate your game somewhere else and copy activation files on a pendrive.
Funny. The biggest coverage in Easter Europe is in Slovenia and it's barely 70%. (Germany has higher coverage than any of eastern europe countries)

You're still making your statements only on your personal experience. For example, in Romania, there is a city with super speed internet connection.

But yes, it's the only city like that in entire country. In most of the cities, if there's some internet connection ,it's either superb expensive or slow as hell.

Please stop making "I was in one city and there was 100% coverage so the whole country has to be the same" arguments. Because you can't be more wrong.

I need to post it again, sorry:

[url=http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/images/3/3b/Internet_access_of_households_(%25_of_all_households).png]http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/images/3/3b/Internet_access_of_households_(%25_of_all_households).png[/url]

That's a pretty common effect, actually; early adopters of new technology often end up with widespread coverage of a shittier version of this technology. Like the US still mostly sees chip-based payment cards as a curiosity, for example.

My part of Prague used to have free wifi, and perhaps still does. Nothing to write home about, but it would do in this case.

If only they'd grill a certain other publisher in the same fashion, instead of always walking on eggshells around them.

If they did, they'd have the fanbase come down on 'em like a ton of bricks.

The reason they can go at Ubisoft so aggressively like this is because Ubisoft barely has a fanbase anymore. They're almost universally reviled on the PC.

Your missing the point. The question isn't "How much coverage is there?". The question is, "How many of our potential customers have broadband?". And that number is (in percentage) probably everywhere in the world roughly the same.

Your little chart proves nothing, because it doesn't take socio-economic factors into account. And it is 3 years old. You are usually so fond of Wikipedia links, why not try this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Europe

Most of the "potential customer base" are young professionals. Those are everywhere in Eastern Europe moving towards the cities. If the cities have good internet, that is enough. My grandma didn't use the internet. Like probably most Eastern European grandmas. But how many university educated Eastern Europeans use the internet? Probably more (percentage) then in "old Europe".

People who fall on the other side of the "digital gap" are not potential customers for videogames in the first place. Those can and should rely on piracy to get their games. If they can't pay the bills for internet, nobody should blame them for for pirating games.