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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.
As a consequence it's also often far easier to pirate something than to find it legally -- and even when you do find it, there's still the DRM woes and having to play by the arbitrary rules of the service. Most of these streaming outlets have forgotten that their entire business model is actually based on being more convenient than piracy, which isn't really the case anymore since it's all fragmented to hell.
I've never had an easier time watching movies and shows then when I finally setup sonarr and radarr. Only bad thing about it is waiting for downloads, but it always finds the thing I want.
I've always said, a single streaming service that had everything, from every single studio, for $50/month, I would never need to pirate again. Until this happens, I will continue to pirate.
Make it $20 and I'm game. $50 is basically what cable was when I cancelled it
Regardless of how we feel about these things, we can know two things form the heart and soul of the Internet:
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?
For someone hasn't pirated since Limewire was a thing can you walk me through the best way to do so?
Sucks about Willow my wife liked that movie and I had Carter queue to watch. Now can't watch it.
So any help I have already gone back to physical dvds but I like to access and make copies of digital stuff as well.
Get a VPN and qBittorrent and visit 1337x.to. That should do for 85-90% of what you are looking for.
"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?
No shit, this was recommended in the side bar; I'm still laughing.
My NAS with docker and Softwarr and my Shield TV with Stremio and Kodi with a Real Debrid account never left.
Yeah, there was a short period when Netflix had almost everything that I pirated less but I have been going strong for a long while now.
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.
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'.
Or don't remake it and instead release it together with a subpar emulator. Nintendo style
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 website reminded me to turn my mobile adblocker back on.
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.
Why pay for stuff if I can have it for free? Steam was a terrible thing for gaming.
Steam was a terrible thing for gaming.
Why?
You don't own the games. You can't trade them. If they get removed from the platform you are SOL. Also it affected physical games as well. Why did I have to install Steam (that was green steam btw) to play Empire Total War?
I'll stick to torrenting, besides a game is like 10% of my salary. Nope.
Are you sure about them being removed from the platform? I purchased GTA: San Andreas before the shitty remaster came out, and I can still download it. It is no longer available/purchasable, but I still "own" it. Do you have a better example, as I haven't really heard of this happening before?
But yeah, all the other points you mention are valid. GOG is better in this regard, but their platform is nowhere near the level of Steam in terms of user experience.