8 ms·

For me it's a simple equation that has as much to do with time and hassle as it has to do with money. I'm not going to juggle five different monthly subscriptio

• rlayton2 7y ago
  Part of the "original" appeal of Netfix was that it was a one-stop-shop, and that effectively killed piracy for a large number of people. The legal solution was easier than the illegal one! Segregation will just revert many back to piracy as you say, until some future round of consolidation.
  • xvilka 7y ago
    Exactly. Same thing was with Steam from Valve. But now both streaming and gaming platforms get a split, thus creating many complications for users. I bet that will increase piracy in both worlds.
    • josephg 7y ago
      At least with video games, having access to multiple online stores is free. Steam and the epic store work side by side just fine - unlike video there's no subscription fee to have access to both catalogues.
      • mikepurvis 7y ago
        Well, and for those of us who had the GOG and/or Uplay launchers anyway, or already had our achievements fractured between PC and one or more console ecosystems, having to install the Epic Games one just wasn't that big a deal. Especially with the bait of free games, exclusives, and the crazy $10 off summer sale promotion. I got it for the Hades early access and to play Transistor and Rime for free.
        • unionpivo 7y ago
          Used to be more lax about it, but now i limit where i have my digital goods at. I have steam and gog accounts. I had/have whole bunch of games both on other sites, but after having my cc info stolen several times when buying stuff from random sites, I limit my exposure. I do have uplay, and ea store on my computer, but i did not buy any games on them (and they don't have my cc info), they were requirements for playing games i bought on steam. I might eventually also get epic store, if it lives for couple of years, and doesn't get any breaches, and has games I am interested in (don't really care about shooters)
        • raxxorrax 7y ago
          Does it finally allow for offline execution of games? Epic just had some good deals for market dominance. Makes sense, since they now have the capital. There are some interesting exclusives, but I resisted in creating an account because I would regret it later. There might be better deals for developers in there, but that will undoubtedly change if the goal of market dominance is reached. It is an overall really bad choice for consumers on nearly every level. I don't really see them as serious competition to steam and GOG.
          • mikepurvis 7y ago
            Can you expand more on the "overall really bad choice for consumers"? Obviously it's missing a bunch of stuff that Steam has, like forums, ratings, cloud saves, offline play, shopping cart, wishlist, etc. But none of those are essential requirements, they're just features and can be built up over time. They're doing a better revenue split than Steam, and they're subsidizing many purchases to offer more attractive prices. And they're offering some previous PS4 exclusives on PC for the first time, like Journey/Flow/Flower and the Quantic Dream games. How is this worse for either consumers or publishers than a total Steam hegemony? I'm not trying to be combative, but I don't understand the mindset.
          • mikepurvis 7y ago
            You can play offline; it's been possible since February: https://epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/launcher-offline-mode https://epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/launcher-offline-mode
    • glogla 7y ago
      I should note that Epic store is mostly viable because of Valve believing they can get things as locked down as Apple and Google and thus can charge the same 30 % tax. "Alternate App Store for iOS" is never going to work, at least if someone doesn't break Apple monopoly. But that's not the case for PC games. So alternate store that charges less is obvious optimization.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    Netflix streaming has never been a one stop shop for movies. It has usually had a relatively weak line up. They had deals with STARZ early on and later Epix that helped.
    • wlesieutre 7y ago
      It's never been a one stop shop for movie streaming. Let's not forget they started as a Blockbuster competitor that mailed you DVDs, and they had (have?) a pretty big catalog of those.
      • scarface74 7y ago
        Yeah they still have a little over 3 million DVD by mail customers. But, I’m not overly price sensitive. I’ll just rent a movie most of the time. It got to the point where I’m too lazy to use But torrent even thousands though I do have a Plex server running.
• stevenjohns 7y ago
  I'm also happy paying for content but equally happy to immediately switch to pirating if it gets too complicated. Probably easier now than it was before - internet is a lot faster, anonymity is a lot better, hardware is a lot cheaper and things like Plex make it pretty damn straight forward to get it up and going. Almost everyone in Australia pirated Game of Thrones -- the only streaming service provider was also the only major cable TV operator and not many people took the bait and signed up.
  • guitarbill 7y ago
    Piracy is getting more attractive, too. Since works get taken out of streaming, you might find things aren't available next month. So even when I have a subscription, I'll still pirate things (the same things!), to create a permanent library and make switching easer, now that streaming libraries per service are shrinking drastically.
    • dagw 7y ago
      Since works get taken out of streaming, you might find things aren't available next month Either that or Netflix only has rights to the first couple of seasons (or in some cases the middle few seasons) so if you actually end up liking the show you're screwed since you won't be able to watch the whole thing. Another annoying problem is that in some cases and in some countries Netflix only has the dubbed version of a movie or show and so you're again screwed if you want to watch the original version.
      • michaelscott 7y ago
        Another weird corner case is when you want to watch a foreign language film, but because I happen to be in a country where I don't speak any of the local languages I also can't use subtitles (they don't provide English subtitles universally). This is probably an incredibly rare thing for most people though I admit.
        • rusticpenn 7y ago
• pnw_hazor 7y ago
  We roll the same way. But I have Amazon Prime as well. My current working rule is no more than two video services. Amazon Prime may be hard to dislodge because my whole family uses my account. So when we turn HBO on in a few weeks to close out GOT, we will shutdown Netflix for awhile at least. Unless I can find 7 day free trial of HBO somehow
  • Causality1 7y ago
    They offer a 4 week free trial actually.
• paulcole 7y ago
  Am I the only one who doesn’t threaten piracy when I don’t get exactly what I want for the price I want? Is it really that unusual to not take things that you shouldn’t? I mean if Hulu doesn’t have a movie I want to watch I’ll just watch something else, I won’t go take it because I feel entitled.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    I will find movies that fall off the back of a truck onto my Plex server. But often, it’s not worth the hassle and I’ll just rent it from iTunes. For TV shows, I’ll pay For a month to stream a few shows I care about. That being said, we do have Netflix free through T-mobile, Hulu mostly for my sons, Amazon Prime, and DC Universe for the few originals and the comics. We also have DirecTVNow mostly for my wife.
  • eitland 7y ago
    No, you are not the only one. But I'll admit sometimes they try really hard to make a pirate out of us by brilliant moves like making 2 out of three LOTR movies available on Netflix or sending all except one single episode of a season of Deadliest Catch on my cable subscription. Maybe one day I'll start downloading too thought, but usually I don't care and don't have time for movies anyway.
  • AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
    > I mean if Hulu doesn’t have a movie I want to watch I’ll just watch something else Would anyone loose anything if instead of something else you ended up pirating the movie that you wanted to watch?
    • paulcole 7y ago
      Yeah, I’d lose respect for myself. I don’t take things that aren’t mine.
      • monetus 7y ago
        I appreciate where you are coming from. Many people understand that, physically, 'pirating' is more akin to copying than taking though. ..And then there is an argument that increasing the availability of content increases the revenue of the producer in the long run. Some game developers and many musicians are even releasing official torrents of their content, assuring quality control. I'm curious how this would work out if bigger studios dabbled with it.
• chx 7y ago
  I bought a Chromecast because it worked with Netflix and stupid cheap. It is convenient! Then comes Amazon Prime and says I need to buy another dongle to watch them. I am so not interested. Grow up, work together with Google, I can't care less whatever petty competition you are playing, your problem not mine. I will just pirate the things I wanted from Prime.
  • aplummer 7y ago
    “This is inconvenient and expensive which gives me the unilateral right to steal your intellectual property”. It’s an interesting take, that you get to steal anything you like if it isn’t priced and sold how you want.
    • stevewillows 7y ago
      its more likely that they already have a piracy workflow and the inconvenience isn't enough to disrupt that workflow, unlike their experience with Netflix / Plex with the Chromecast.
      • Godel_unicode 7y ago
        How is that different from the comment you're replying to? "...and sold how you want"
        • stevewillows 7y ago
          I'm just saying that for people who have no issues with piracy, the provider has an even more difficult time winning their business. For companies like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc, it should be in their best interest to be available on all platforms like Chromecast, etc. We're not debating the views of piracy from the parent -- that was already established.
    • StavrosK 7y ago
      While I get the moral argument here, I'm going to go with the market signaling. Hollywood can get its shit together and make something that's convenient, or it can die. Either choice is fine by me, and I'll figure out how to integrate piracy in my moral framework later. The future I want looks like what GoG is for games, or Bandcamp is for music.
• tw04 7y ago
  >I'll just go back to piracy like I did before Netflix existed. It amazes me they seem to be completely oblivious that this will be the the result. A percentage of someone else's revenue is still a bigger number than a percentage of nothing...
  • Godel_unicode 7y ago
    I suspect they're gambling that once people have sampled the "don't get off the couch" convenience of streaming, piracy won't be an appetizing alternative. I did always think that piracy was more about convenience than price for people who aren't broke college students.
    • koffiezet 7y ago
      > I did always think that piracy was more about convenience than price for people who aren't broke college students. True, I would pay 1 or 2 streaming services (as I do the right now) - but more? No thank you, this becomes cluttered, confusing and inconvenient. Today, I still torrent stuff even if it's available on a streaming service I already pay for (which I don't see as piracy), for 2 main reasons: guaranteed quality and ease of use. My Plex server is the go-to place for most of the better quality shows we follow, and Netflix is for a lot of the 'meh' content you browse when you're not sure what to see, or what I call 'throw away' content we would never watch a second time. I do want to encourage them to keep making good content however, so I don't mind paying for it. So far, Netflix has been rather consumer-focused and as a company has - afaik - done nothing to damage my trust, but that's not something I can say about all those companies having or planning to offer streaming services. I would gladly pay for an HBO subscription if it were available here, since they produce some serious quality content - but it isn't. I would however most likely still torrent their shows.
  • rhino369 7y ago
    The majority of people either have a moral issue with 100% piracy or cannot easily figure out how to do it. Public torrents lead to getting piracy emails from your isp. Private torrents are annoying and difficult. In general you have to deal with shady organizations and without experience it’s hard to know what’s a scam and what isn’t. And I suspect the vast majority of pirates never stopped. And wouldn’t stop unless the price was well below fair value. Winning over pirates is shitty business strategy. Also Netflix’s 12 bucks a month isn’t enough to fund all the media that’s created. Netflix would have to charge a lot more (indistinguishable from multiple services that charge less) or less tv/movies would get made. Netflix’s larger catalog of old was subsidized by network and cable companies. They sold rights for pennies on the dollar. But Netflix is killing those networks. The business method isn’t viable.
• chillacy 7y ago
  If money is really no object, then almost all content is available for individual digital purchase on iTunes or Amazon still. But I'd also understand if that cost is a completely different ballgame than streaming.