LOL.
We pay for 4K, but we don’t get more than 720p unless we use some proprietary shit hardware and agree to their super-invasive “privacy policy” - and they expect people to NOT set sail in the high seas? GTFO…
I’m willing to pay for one, maybe two subscriptions, and ain’t nobody got time to dig for which service has what show to find out season 2 is on some other service entirely.
Piracy provides a better user experience 🤷♂️
Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem - Gaben
I generally agree with him, but there are a lot of people who pirate simply because they don’t want to pay. And I’m not casting moral judgment here, i just feel like it bears mentioning lol “almost always” is pretty generous
No it also means it’s a service problem in the sense that it’s not priced right for a geography. Pricing a game $70 where local average monthly income is $120 a month is a service problem. If you expect people from that geographic region to pay, the product should be priced within their means. And thus argument is valid only for digital goods where every new copy of the said goods costs mere few cents.
No it also means it’s a service problem in the sense that it’s not priced right for a geography. Pricing a game $70 where local average monthly income is $120 a month is a service problem. If you expect people from that geographic region to pay, the product should be priced within their means. And thus argument is valid only for digital goods where every new copy of the said goods costs mere few cents.
People who pirate because they don’t want to pay will never, ever pay. Not worth considering them to be honest.
Lets compare three options as example:
One streaming service with everything:
- monetary costs: 25 €/month
- opportunity cost: login, type name in search bar, enjoy in good quality, language and subtitles of choice
Piracy:
- monetary costs: 0-5 €/month (hardware/vpn)
- opportunity costs: keep up to date with existing aggregator sites, take protective measures against identification, be wary of malware, limited scope of languages and subtitles, varying quality
Current streaming services:
- monetary costs: 100 €/month or more, if you cover most services
- opportunity cost: login to each service, look if they have the particular series/movie, be limited by region to which languages and subtitles you can use, have only certain episodes or certain seasons of a series, get a movie as a result, but actually have to pay extra for lending it…
People choose whether to pay monetary or opportunity costs. For a broke student priacy might still be the way to go, because they have time but not money. For most people a convenient streaming service will be the way to go though, because not having to worry about everything around and just finding your movie/series in 30 seconds, after you put dinner in the plates is the preferred option.
The current situation combines high monetary costs with high opportunity costs, so that piracy becomes attractive to many people, who would be happy to pay for a streaming service, that actually covers everything.
So i think “almost always” is perfectly applicable. Also keep in mind, that the offer of pirated stuff is directly related to the demand. if the demand reduces, so will the offer, which in this case would make piracy even less convenient. Of course the pricing matters, and if the one streaming service would cost say 50 €/month, more people would pirate again. But the dominant factor first is the service quality.
He made that statement when streaming barely existed. People were still primarily buying DVDs. That was the late 2000’s when it was only Netflix, maybe Hulu was just starting, and game streaming was barely a concept.
If that’s true on its face, then you’re not losing any money either way since they are never going to pay regardless even if you try to force them to.
Meanwhile, you can absolutely scare away what could have been a paying customer by offering dogshit service.
That’s never been an assumption you can make.
If you hand me a $10 version of a thing or a $5 option of the exact same thing, I’m taking the $5. Free is no different. Especially when they can do it from the comfort of their home and not drive to a mall to buy the CD or whatever. Remember what year it was when this all started man.
Remember what year it was when this all started man.
1903 when Edison v. Lubin was filed?
If you’re going to be a smartass then I have no desire to continue this conversation. I am talking about when piracy became mainstream via napster because it became easy for people to get free music.
Im willing to pay for two. It used to be netflix and prime, then hulu, paramount plus, disney…
Now its down to one- Proton VPN 🏴☠️
For the record, you can use justwatch.com and it will tell you exactly where you can watch it, and which seasons. But I’m still not paying for multiple subscriptions.
Since #1 on the list is always The Seven Seas there’s no reason to proceed further.
I was fine with paying for Netflix. Then they started pulling shit off for their own services and I quit when there was nothing but the lame Netflix originals and some old shit I don’t watch anymore. One of the things that put me over the edge was when they would do things like put a sequel up but not the original.
How the fuck do you expect me to just jump into The Two Towers and not expect me to want to watch The Fellowship of the Ring first?! Oh you think I’m going to go buy/rent the first movie 😂 that’s cute.
No, I’ll just go back to pirating. Much more convenient to be able to say, watch an episode of The Office and then switch to a Marvel movie from Disney+ and then a Marvel show from Netflix without paying a dime to 3 different subscriptions and being inconvenienced to have to close and open a whole new fucking app.
Now I just spend money for a VPN each month. Less than what it costs for a single of any of those other subscriptions too and I can choose my quality and version and not worry about it getting removed tomorrow!
Sometimes piracy is the only method of archival
Some things are literally not available anymore by legal means. Piracy is an important tool in preserving content for future generations. Future historian will be proud of pirates.
https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-not-price/
As Gabe Newell said: “Piracy isn’t a pricing issue, its a service issue”
As my friend said: "every time a plastic video disc says " operation not permitted " a torrent is born…
As I say: “People will pay when it’s easy, more reliable and more convenient.” As a software product manager, I forbid my product from ever wasting developer cycles with copy protection… It’s expensive to deliver, annoying to real customers and doesn’t make us any more money…
I don’t disagree with anything but I feel like GabeN said that before streaming and subscriptions took over.
Photoshop is an incredibly easy to use and powerful tool for creators - I’d be happy to drop like $200 on, for example, the 2024 version. I’m not happy to spend $10 or $30+ a month for life to use it, especially when they lock you in to a year subscription and charge you a fee if you cancel early so you literally can’t just sub only the month when you need it, it’s the whole year, period. I’ll just pirate or use photopea or whatever.
Similar for streaming. Netflix gave us the option to pay for more screens to watch on. Now suddenly it matters whose house it’s in?? All while you’re constantly removing value from the platform and you cancel anything decent if the production value is too high? Fuck you man I’m not paying like $30 monthly for that.
Please do keep voting with your wallet - its one of the few remaining ways to express our discontent!) That being said, I feel like both of those examples are where the service provided by adobe and then Netflix are terrible.
Adobe is making you buy a whole year and Netflix is hassling you for “letting your pensioner mum watch your account”… To me, both of those are examples of bad service (coupled with cost).
For me, a counter example for me is amazon.com: I hate what they’re doing to the retail landscape but find it hard to resist, as I find them SOOO convenient, and their customer service (for now) is absolutely stunning!!! Now if their prices were too high, I’d personally probably pay for that convenience a bit. (Where there model breaks for me completely is warranty major purchases: I’ve had warranty denied by manufacturers for items purchased through non approved amazon resellers. So now, for me, anything over $100 and I’m looking for direct purchase from the manufacturer as a preference. )
As a user of software, I salute you.
When Netflix had (seemingly) everything I was totally cool and the gang with paying for that service.
Now I have:
- Netflix
- Amazon Prime
- Apple TV
- Disney+
- NowTv
- fuck knows what else
and I still can’t find the content I want to watch. I had an urge to watch The Good, The Bad And The Ugly the other day. Could I find it on any services I pay a combined £50+ a month for? Could I fuck. Why would they be surprised they’re pushing people to ‘alternative’ sources? Sure, I can rent or buy Barbie and Oppenheimer if I want, but I don’t want. What I want is access to the tens of thousands of old, excellent, films that have been made.
My NAS literally arrived today.
I’m done.Been paying for years but it’s becomming equally predatory as linear TV so I’m out.
I need to continue the dollars trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars was pretty good.
For A Few Dollars More is so-so (but I’d still watch it again), but The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is epic.
And if you enjoy them, then take a crack at High Plains Drifter or Pale Rider which are both excellent though share an underlying theme. The Outlaw Josey Wales is also well worth a watch, as is the magnificent (and best picture Oscar winner) Unforgiven starring and directed by an older, wiser, and grittier Clint Eastwood.
Definitely will check out High Plains Drifter and Magnificent Seven. Pale Rider and Unforgiven are already on the list along with Gran Torino. Also already watched The Outlaw Josey Wales, it was a really good movie.
You might also want to add Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai to your list too - they’re the Kurasawa films that A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven are western (in both senses) remakes of.
I watched Yojimbo already (which I personally found to be mediocre). I’m actually planning of watching Seven Samurai before Magnificent Seven.
12% over four years? Damn. Somehow I had the impression that there’d been a significant increase.
Netflix revenue is up by roughly 60% in the same four years.
if these two numbers were reversed, piracy sites would get the same treatment as videos with actual criminal content. we’re lucky
Thank you for keeping things in perspective.
Maybe people would pirate less if you let them keep what they pay for.
If buying isn’t owning…
You’re buying… A temporary permission to access certain content.
…then piracy isn’t theft.
This is the number one reason I won’t ever pay for a netflix subscription (or others) again. Pay for 4K but you dont get 4K if you want to watch on your laptop or android streaming box that they don’t approve of. Like how much fucking greedier could you be? Fuck them I hope they all go the way of blockbuster soon.
1 of those 12% is just me lol /s
I get pissed at my family for being traditional hoarders but I somewhat inherited that as a data hoarder. The amount of stuff I have pirated over the years and not actually used or watched is hilarious.
I can easily say that the amount of my friends and family that have become interested in my Emby setup has expontentially consistently increased every round that these streaming providers have increased their rates.
The experience of launching 7 different streaming apps to find something, content constantly vanishing or moving platforms, and just an overall poor user experience coupled with doubling/tripling of each platforms costs…
The companies have almost successfully re-introduced the very problem that streaming originally solved.
It’s like this dipshits don’t want our money. I’ve always been firm that any content removed from streaming services is a message from that content company that they don’t want the money of the customers subscribed to said service and thus are okay with those people pirating it instead.
If they cared about the money, they’d had left the content there.
But realistically even if pump and dump schemes like this make the customers hate them, it might still make more as a total sum - and if so as a cooperation they’d almost have to take the shitty route (or be surpassed by someone who will).
Yay capitalism
Yay capitalism
Lol, you think greed won’t exist under socialism? Greed is why communism fails every time. People are inherently greedy in a world where scarcity exists.
Why yes, greed is exactly why Cuba deserves to be embargoed for all eternity, look how flawed communism is lol haha /s
All I see here is pointing fingers at Cuba and Venezuela failing in places that they were sabotaged by the US, big surprise.
What use is communism when it’s so easily foiled by capitalism? Seems like a major flaw.
Uh no? I don’t think I really implied it wouldn’t either, nor even that I’m a socialist tbh
something something manufactured scarcity changes things
Luckily, we don’t live in a world where scarcity exists, just one with a resource distribution problem.
we don’t live in a world where scarcity exists
Wrong, there’s a distinct scarcity of logic in your arguments.
“Scarcity is so fundamental to economics that scarce goods are also known as economic goods. In economics, scarce goods are those for which demand would exceed supply at a price of zero.” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scarcity.asp
How many more democratically elected Latin American governments do we have to replace with fascist military dictatorships before you finally understand that socialism simply doesn’t work?
- The USA
My map is bigger and, global.
I win.
Bold of you to think that they even think of us at all.
I actually mean that seriously: we continue seeing, over and over, that no, quite often they do NOT expect people to NOT do that, they quite simply DGAF. They pirate us, we pirate them, it becomes just another “cost of doing business”, until they are strong enough to eventually crack down further. See ad blocking & Chrome recently, after multiple decades of internet ads pushing the limits.
It’s like a zombie nom noming your brains - after like 2 bites it’ll get bored and wander off, and it literally doesn’t even need to “eat”, it simply is so fucking DUMB that it doesn’t know what else to do with itself. It is truly horrifying b/c while your entrails may be strewn about on the floor, or in the throats of tens of zombies, they in turn… don’t even have the decency to be aware that you’ve died!?
Lower-level managers sell ideas to higher-level managers, and “logic” has little to do with those conversations, compared to the amount of emo-stroking that goes on “oh, you will become so rich, and powerful, and handsome, and brave, and precious” (from here:-P) - and so long as enough people play along, that happens!
Our world is just so fucking STUPID.
That said, what they do is on them, while what we do is on us. Find a way to live - hopefully by finding a way to contribute, if/where you can.
Us: We think about you all the time!
Corporations: Funny, because we don’t think of you ever.
(Funny b/c in this pic, corps are the ones who are dicks:-P)
