+1 Funny. Now what point were you trying to make?

Australian video game market does not matter to Ubisoft. The costs involved in improving its network for a few Aussie gamers is not cost effective. ok the Aussie gamers may boycott Ubisoft. Not a big loss. Think of the big picture.

Internet connections in Australia are terribly slow and laggy and they pay a premium for broadband in Australia. The location of where Australia is situated does not help much in regards to its internet networks. The Australian government has not updated its telecommunications industry in a long time and that adversely impacts upon internet broadband networks.

Ok thanks for the clarification. Yes you are right AU is often quite behind in both speed and cost of internet access, but there is no logistical reason not to support them. Sure they are only 1%, but if every country that was only 1% were ignored gaming would be restricted to about 10 countries and all but dead. FYI I'm not Australian, but even I know that losing any market- no matter the size for no reason is dumb.

Yes, please, think of the big picture. Ubisoft has gained nothing. It has become the laughingstock of the internet. It has been DDoSed, and it hasn't even worked. Paying customers have been screwed over and over and pirates are just laughing their asses off.

I believe just about everybody called this, all the way down to the dynamic DoS attack and Ubisoft are just plain idiots for not listening.

USA accounts for a staggering 50% of the total video games sales market. UK is the second biggest with around 20% of the video game market. Third biggest is Japan accounrting for 15% of the video game market. The rest of the world would make up the remaining 15% of the video game sales market.

The amount of pissed off *buyers* on Ubi's forums would suggest you are correct. I feel sorry to the poor people who bought this off Steam and didn't realize that it had an extra layer of fuckyouintheass-DRM. Of course as I said earlier the cynic in me is thrilled to see Ubi get sprayed in the face by the hailstorm of pissed off customers.

DRM is killing off PC game sales. Buy a legitimate copy of the game with DRM which may be unplayable or download a playable hacked version of the same game for free. Hmmmm it is a tough decision.

The problem is, it's not just the Australians that are affected; how Ubisoft acts in this instance will affect their reputation with gamers across the world.  To tell the Australians "tough *$&#" and refuse to support them because it's "not cost effective" will send the message to the rest of the market that Ubisoft is perfectly willing to take the buyer's money without guaranteeing that they will give the buyer anything of value in return.  To send a message like that would be the equivalent of Ubisoft pointing an autocannon at its own foot, and squeezing the trigger until it runs out of ammo.

Fair, but when the net cost of supporting that extra 15% is essentially zero, why not? I know, I know, rhetorical question.

Your numbers sort of represent the big picture, but they aren't really close to the actual market shares.  In 2008 the US was 3.2 times larger than the UK market.  The UK was only five times larger than the Australian market, not 20.  I can't find a comprehensive list for the entire world, so I can't really tell you what that means for absolute market share.  The UK dropped to 3.3 billion pounds in 2009 (down 17.9%).  The US was down 8%, and Japan down 6.9%.  Depending on currency fluctuations which may throw off my calculations, that puts Japan ahead of the UK again.  Anyways, I guess my point is that even disregarding markets like China/Korea, South America, and the Middle East,  the US/UK/Japan do not make up 85%.