Piracy Is Coming Back, Baby!
Piracy Is Coming Back, Baby!
Streaming has ruined media preservation for an entire generation, and older games aren’t faring so well either. Piracy is the only way to save them
"Piracy can't be stealing if paying for it isn't owning"
Sorry, I couldn't hear you over my 56k modem downloading a car, can you say that again?
It never left
I was gonna say, the article says that streaming ruined media preservation for an entire generation, but guess what, the pirates were preserving it anyway.
Piracy never went anywhere, "baby"
I reached a point in my late 20s where I had enough money coming in and there were only a few streaming services where I decided to minimise my piracy if I could conveniently access something legally to make up for all the piracy I did as a teen. Seven years later and inflations huge, my pay hasn't kept pace and every tom, dick and Harry have their own service now. So it's been back to the high seas for me.
This dilution of content is really the issue. If Netflix still had the movies I want to watch, I'd just use it. Netflix is easier than piracy.
But Netflix doesn't ever have what I want to watch anymore. Now those movies are scattered across half a dozen other services that each cost $15/month. It's a pain to figure out what's streaming where and if it will cost me anything extra on top of my monthly dues. As Gabe Newell said, it's a service problem.
Piracy gets you more centralized access to more content for free. If you're behind a VPN or use a private tracker (or both) it's safe. So why spend all my money on Netflix and Hulu and Prime and Disney and Max and whatever else just to have a fifty/fifty chance that one of them might be streaming the movie I want to watch?
Regardless of how we feel about these things, we can know two things form the heart and soul of the Internet:
- Piracy
- Adult content
Piracy has always offered a simpler and more user-friendly alternative to the official methods of consuming movies and series. And today, with tools like Jellyfin or Plex, everything is more accessible and at least centralized, so you don't need 15 platforms (you just need to know where to look to get the content). In the case of games, the presence of anti-tampering solutions like Denuvo is a significant concern. These solutions not only consume a considerable amount of system resources but also ironically make pirated versions more playable on less powerful platforms. Unless companies adopt a new mindset and approach, piracy is likely to continue thriving and evolving.
Yup, this is the same fight the Music labels fought in the late 90's and early 00's. Piracy offers a far superior user experience and a lower price point. With the chances of facing punishment low enough that most people expect to get away with it. The content producers could solve the problem, but none of them want to, as that would mean lower profits per person. So, we're stuck in a cycle of companies whining about piracy while not actually addressing the incentives which drive people to it.
It's kinda funny that, what people want is a lot like the old cable TV model, without the bullshit of contracts and bundles. Imagine a single service, when you can get all the content from all the producers for one price. Ya, that's cable TV. The problems were that cable TV had regional monopolies (in the US), consumers got locked into expensive contracts which discouraged free choice and it was largely impossible to say, "I want channels X, Y and C. But not Z, A or B." Your choices were "Here's every channel known to man for the low, well not that low, price of hundreds of dollars per month; or, you can get two of the channels you want, but not that other one you really want." It's no wonder that people jumped ship when streaming came along. Oh and as a bonus problem, time shifting content on cable was chock full of "fuck you".
I was a reasonably early cord cutter. Went with an OTA antenna for a few years, followed by YouTube TV and finally just axing live TV all together. I've done the math a few times and even with costs creeping up, and subscribing to half a dozen services, the costs for streaming still beat the stuffing out of what I was paying for cable. Back when I cut the cord, I was up around $200/month for all the channels I wanted (and a shit-ton I didn't). With the services I have now, I'm closer to $100/month. And I had to pay an "early termination" fee back then to break my contract. Given that history, anyone asking for a return to that type of model can go get fucked. Ya, it's a PITA when content is pulled or I have to fumble between several different services to find something to watch. But, I'd rather have the freedom to trim and adjust services at a whim, than be locked back into that bullshit.
And all this is why rising piracy doesn't surprise me either. The current system is broke. The system which came before it was broke even worse. And it's been pretty well established that piracy on the internet is a low risk action with an end result that puts the official way to shame. Piracy isn't a price problem, its a service delivery problem. You can never compete with piracy on price, just on service. And the content companies aren't doing that. Video content needs a Steam like service to create a service offering which is, at least, as good as the service piracy is offering. And while some people won't use an official service at any price, it's still early enough that many potential pirates could be swayed to pay a reasonable cost for a good service. But, that might mean lower costs and companies not having exclusive access to viewership data. And they won't allow that until market forces make their refusal untenable.
I had this realization about 5 years ago and just started building out my Plex server. Today I have over 10 TB of movies and shows on there and we love it. Being able to watch any show from any platform is a breeze, and with my file server I can download torrents anywhere and they instantly move to my seedbox and start downloading, so it's super easy to add new content. Fuck streaming services.
Piracy.akes the best products. No previews for movies you do not want to watch. No inconvenient menu options.
Piracy as a protest should be a legitimate strategy and not be illegal. There has to be some counter-measure to prevent the centralisation of ownership, the predatory and unethical practices like abuse of labour, selling shoddy or even broken products, not to mention conditioning children to become cash cows - or "whales".
I include reverse engineering servers in that equation.
While I’m not a fan of nostalgia-mining or the constant remastering and remaking of games
... but in the same sentence has nothing but good things to say about constant tinkering and overhauling:
companies are still keeping some popular older games accessible by relaunching them with better graphics, fine-tuned gameplay, and even added scenes
Dude sounds like he's just speaking out of two sides of his mouth.
By the way, this is also why they are against game preservation. Artificially making the $thing unavailable is a sure fire way to sell it again 'remade'.
Holy fuck, I just wanted to read this article and the website nearly gave me an aneurysm! Who the fuck ever thought an uncloseable animated border ad would be a good idea?
Someone pirate the article for the rest of us. Jesus
You could always step into the 21st century and run an adblocker like the rest of us smart web users.
This isn't the reason piracy is coming back in my friend group. That reason would be the diversification of streaming sources. There's no way I'm paying $100 a month for streaming from all the major players, especially if they include ads.
When Netflix was all you needed, streaming was great and reasonable. It quickly became more trouble than it was worth over the last decade.
I could afford a hundred a month but having to deal with multiple platforms is a no go for me. Then even when something is available, it might not be available in a certain region just makes the whole system crappy.
When you can do it on one UI and pretty much have the entire catalog available without complexity....
Why pay for stuff if I can have it for free? Steam was a terrible thing for gaming.
I completely disagree. You still own the games in Steam, and you can download them forever as long as you have your account. It's not like streaming services that can just remove stuff. I think you may not understand the difference.
If I buy a game on Steam can I sell it to you? I remember when you could just buy a game and install it, now I need another program? Why?
I wouldn't say you own games on Steam. You can't install them without Steam, and usually you can't even launch them without being connected to Steam. And you if lose your account, they are lost forever.
GOG on the other hand, you can absolutely download offline installers for you entire game collection and keep them somewhere safe in a hard drive from which you could still install them 10 years after GOG is dead. (and hopefully the games still work on newer hardware)
Steam was a terrible thing for gaming.
Why?