Generally it’s agreed the best way to stop piracy is by offering a more convenient alternative. I generally for example don’t pirate video games available on Steam. With streaming services being so disjoint and expensive now I’ve gone back to pirating, at least with cable you can bundle channels.
I think a much better comparison than Steam would be Spotify.
I use Plex for all my movies and TV shows for the same reasons you mentioned. All my stuff can be in one place instead of having to pay for Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, and whatever other fucking shit is out there.
Plex also supports music libraries, but I don’t use that feature. Why? Because Spotify has literally 99.9% of all the music I want to listen to, and aside from maybe like Garth Brooks, the other 0.1% is on Youtube. Spotify did it right by just having a basic service that you can pay for and get everything you want. If I had to subscribe to Spotify, Tidal, Napster (Still a thing I guess?), and 4 other services just to access all the music I listen to, I’d go back to piracy.
With Spotify slowly starting to reach a limit in subscribers, it’s unfortunately only a matter of time until they start pulling what Netflix is doing and finding new ways to get money from customers.
Plex also supports music libraries, but I don’t use that feature. Why? Because Spotify has literally 99.9% of all the music I want to listen to, and aside from maybe like Garth Brooks, the other 0.1% is on Youtube. Spotify did it right by just having a basic service that you can pay for and get everything you want. If I had to subscribe to Spotify, Tidal, Napster (Still a thing I guess?), and 4 other services just to access all the music I listen to, I’d go back to piracy.
Spotify also has a free ad-supported service, which while it does have ads, isn’t as bad as radio, or needs you to go to the effort of pirating the music you want.
For about the same price as it currently costs to bundle all the major streaming platforms. Plus, cable never had anything near the amount of content we have now on streaming.
I think people who compare cable to streaming don’t remember what it was like before streaming
And a lot of PC gamers have Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to Steam.
Glacially slow and pathetic customer service. They have an F rating by the Better Business Bureau. Offline mode sucks. And Valve bullies developers into agreeing to exploitative pricing terms:
You know what would fix this? Competition. But when Epic created a game store and implemented the same tactics that Valve is using - Steam fanboys cried.
People don’t really care about these issues - they want their “team” to win.
People don’t really care about these issues - they want their “team” to win.
Yeah the amount of “No steam no buy” fanboys is absurd. They act like having to open a different program to see their games is like hacking into the matrix. Not to mention that there are already programs like GOG Galaxy that compile all of your games from all your services in to one GUI.
The way Epic handled competition was by strong-handing exclusives constantly without actually providing a better service. Last time I bought a game from Epic, it didn’t even have a cart system to buy games in bulk. Couple that with the tolerance of cryptocurrency/blockchain and acquisitions of sites like Artstation and Bandcamp, and yeah - people have reasons to not like Epic. I’ve heard stories of people getting locked out of their banks because of the lack of a cart and they were buying a lot of games in a short amount of time. I’ve also heard stories about people’s Epic accounts getting breached because of Fortnite BS.
And I’m saying this as someone who uses multiple launchers. I hated Steam back in the mid-2010s (skipped the middleman and bought GTAV from Rockstar directly) and they were in quite a bad rut with Steam Greenlight and the paid mods fiasco. People were rightfully loudly critical of Steam and at a time, Valve really did not deserve taking a 30% cut. They’ve done a lot since then to recoup that lost trust and deserve the 30% cut, Proton and the Steam Deck being a massive part of that for many people.
I buy steam games, even ones I’ve already pirated, for a few reasons.
Quick and easy downloads
Seamless updates
Almost all my other purchased games in one place.
Cloud saves
Durability, just knowing my games will be available to download on my next PC for the foreseeable future.
And I pirate just about everything I watch mainly because I’m not willing to play musical subscriptions to watch the shows I want to see at the end of a long day.
If the film industry had a service that offered a similar experience to a Plex share, I’d pay quite a bit for it. But instead they have this system designed to extract maximum value from every viewer, and I’m tired of it.
Gabe Newell was right on the money when he said piracy is a service issue, not a price issue.
To add onto this, when someone who can’t afford something pirates something, there is no lost sale because there never was a sale there to begin with. It didn’t take any money away from the company since they were never going to see any money from that person.
With that said, the only piracy I partake in is for archival purposes, and like you I buy Steam games regardless because it’s too convenient like you said.
Convenience would be knowing whether the show I’ve queued up to watch will remain on the service, or getting warned well ahead of time if it’s going to expire. Or having every season of a serialized show available or at least something showing that not all of it is on the service before you get deep into it and suddenly cut off halfway through. Or easy access to my watch history and likes, as well as more robust settings (or heck, any settings) to tailor the way content is shown so I can get a consistent user experience whether I’m browsing new shows or diving back into the next episode of something.
Yep, and when netflix took off piracy took a dive because of how good it was. Then every studio decided they wanted their piece of the streaming pie so pulled all their content off netflix and released their own streaming service, so now we’re basically back to having to pay $100 a month to get access to everything, just like we were with cable before netflix changed the game. Shockingly, piracy has shot up again.
These companies are so stupid and greedy.
The only games I’ll pirate are ones that are no longer available to buy, because what else am I supposed to do?
Also stopped pirating games when steam came around. And I stopped pirating shows and movies with the rise of streaming services. Now though, I’m looking into standing up a media server.
best way to stop piracy is by offering a more convenient alternative. I generally for example don’t pirate video games available on Steam
I have towed this line for years. Recently Battlefield 2042 was available on steam for a great price so I snapped it up. I’d played it at release via a 1 month trial of EA play and it was absolute trash.
The game is totally fixed! The problem I have, is that I bought it on steam…and it forces me to install and keep myself logged in to the EA app anyway. It fails to launch the game every single time. I have to reboot my computer, manually log out of EA and log back in. It is an absolute shitfight, because EA gargle balls all day.
My point is, I bought the game on steam and I got absolutely duped. I’m all for a bigger library, but not if it means I have to install and use the other crappy apps anyway. Such a disappointment, I won’t be so quick to buy on steam anymore unless they implement a great big flashing red warning that the game is not actually on steam at all.
Not big enough, red enough, or flashing enough. I like steam a lot. I don’t like EA one little bit, or battlenet, or any of those other half-built apps.
Generally it’s agreed the best way to stop piracy is by offering a more convenient alternative. I generally for example don’t pirate video games available on Steam. With streaming services being so disjoint and expensive now I’ve gone back to pirating, at least with cable you can bundle channels.
Gabe Newall said himself that piracy is never a price problem, but a service problem.
That’s such a simple yet legendary quote… moreso with each passing decade
Go Gaben!
Never have wise words rang more true…
I think a much better comparison than Steam would be Spotify.
I use Plex for all my movies and TV shows for the same reasons you mentioned. All my stuff can be in one place instead of having to pay for Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, and whatever other fucking shit is out there.
Plex also supports music libraries, but I don’t use that feature. Why? Because Spotify has literally 99.9% of all the music I want to listen to, and aside from maybe like Garth Brooks, the other 0.1% is on Youtube. Spotify did it right by just having a basic service that you can pay for and get everything you want. If I had to subscribe to Spotify, Tidal, Napster (Still a thing I guess?), and 4 other services just to access all the music I listen to, I’d go back to piracy.
With Spotify slowly starting to reach a limit in subscribers, it’s unfortunately only a matter of time until they start pulling what Netflix is doing and finding new ways to get money from customers.
Spotify also has a free ad-supported service, which while it does have ads, isn’t as bad as radio, or needs you to go to the effort of pirating the music you want.
Spotify is already making people pay for sound quality that’s akin to a TDK C90
i have crappy internet and there’s no way to preload a movie with netflix so the service is useless to me. i have to torrent
That’s unfortunate but understandable.
For about the same price as it currently costs to bundle all the major streaming platforms. Plus, cable never had anything near the amount of content we have now on streaming.
I think people who compare cable to streaming don’t remember what it was like before streaming
And a lot of PC gamers have Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to Steam.
Glacially slow and pathetic customer service. They have an F rating by the Better Business Bureau. Offline mode sucks. And Valve bullies developers into agreeing to exploitative pricing terms:
https://www.eurogamer.net/new-lawsuit-accuses-valve-of-abusing-steam-market-power-to-prevent-price-competition
You know what would fix this? Competition. But when Epic created a game store and implemented the same tactics that Valve is using - Steam fanboys cried.
People don’t really care about these issues - they want their “team” to win.
I’ve had a very pleasant experience every time I’ve talked to Steam Support. What’s so bad about them?
Steam is definitely not as bad as you’re making it out to be.
Why can we buy games cheaper on other services then?
Steam works and the prices are good and I don’t see them buying exclusives. That’s good enough for me nothing is perfect.
Yeah the amount of “No steam no buy” fanboys is absurd. They act like having to open a different program to see their games is like hacking into the matrix. Not to mention that there are already programs like GOG Galaxy that compile all of your games from all your services in to one GUI.
The way Epic handled competition was by strong-handing exclusives constantly without actually providing a better service. Last time I bought a game from Epic, it didn’t even have a cart system to buy games in bulk. Couple that with the tolerance of cryptocurrency/blockchain and acquisitions of sites like Artstation and Bandcamp, and yeah - people have reasons to not like Epic. I’ve heard stories of people getting locked out of their banks because of the lack of a cart and they were buying a lot of games in a short amount of time. I’ve also heard stories about people’s Epic accounts getting breached because of Fortnite BS.
And I’m saying this as someone who uses multiple launchers. I hated Steam back in the mid-2010s (skipped the middleman and bought GTAV from Rockstar directly) and they were in quite a bad rut with Steam Greenlight and the paid mods fiasco. People were rightfully loudly critical of Steam and at a time, Valve really did not deserve taking a 30% cut. They’ve done a lot since then to recoup that lost trust and deserve the 30% cut, Proton and the Steam Deck being a massive part of that for many people.
I buy steam games, even ones I’ve already pirated, for a few reasons.
Quick and easy downloads
Seamless updates
Almost all my other purchased games in one place.
Cloud saves
Durability, just knowing my games will be available to download on my next PC for the foreseeable future.
And I pirate just about everything I watch mainly because I’m not willing to play musical subscriptions to watch the shows I want to see at the end of a long day.
If the film industry had a service that offered a similar experience to a Plex share, I’d pay quite a bit for it. But instead they have this system designed to extract maximum value from every viewer, and I’m tired of it.
Gabe Newell was right on the money when he said piracy is a service issue, not a price issue.
To add onto this, when someone who can’t afford something pirates something, there is no lost sale because there never was a sale there to begin with. It didn’t take any money away from the company since they were never going to see any money from that person.
With that said, the only piracy I partake in is for archival purposes, and like you I buy Steam games regardless because it’s too convenient like you said.
I don’t think Netflix could get any more convenient than it already is though.
Convenience would be knowing whether the show I’ve queued up to watch will remain on the service, or getting warned well ahead of time if it’s going to expire. Or having every season of a serialized show available or at least something showing that not all of it is on the service before you get deep into it and suddenly cut off halfway through. Or easy access to my watch history and likes, as well as more robust settings (or heck, any settings) to tailor the way content is shown so I can get a consistent user experience whether I’m browsing new shows or diving back into the next episode of something.
I think Netflix could get a lot more convenient.
Yep, and when netflix took off piracy took a dive because of how good it was. Then every studio decided they wanted their piece of the streaming pie so pulled all their content off netflix and released their own streaming service, so now we’re basically back to having to pay $100 a month to get access to everything, just like we were with cable before netflix changed the game. Shockingly, piracy has shot up again.
These companies are so stupid and greedy.
The only games I’ll pirate are ones that are no longer available to buy, because what else am I supposed to do?
Also stopped pirating games when steam came around. And I stopped pirating shows and movies with the rise of streaming services. Now though, I’m looking into standing up a media server.
I have towed this line for years. Recently Battlefield 2042 was available on steam for a great price so I snapped it up. I’d played it at release via a 1 month trial of EA play and it was absolute trash.
The game is totally fixed! The problem I have, is that I bought it on steam…and it forces me to install and keep myself logged in to the EA app anyway. It fails to launch the game every single time. I have to reboot my computer, manually log out of EA and log back in. It is an absolute shitfight, because EA gargle balls all day.
My point is, I bought the game on steam and I got absolutely duped. I’m all for a bigger library, but not if it means I have to install and use the other crappy apps anyway. Such a disappointment, I won’t be so quick to buy on steam anymore unless they implement a great big flashing red warning that the game is not actually on steam at all.
I swore off buying games from companies like EA, and Ubisoft years ago. I’m still bitter about getting duped with Far Cry 3.
They do put the warning when a game needs a 3rd party launcher tho?
Not big enough, red enough, or flashing enough. I like steam a lot. I don’t like EA one little bit, or battlenet, or any of those other half-built apps.