Yeah, I don’t think piracy ever came close to dying. It definitely slowed down for a small time when Netflix was the only real player in the streaming space, as a lot of pirates didn’t actually mind paying for a service as long as it worked and had content. For those people, piracy was a service issue, not a cost issue.
Now that Netflix doesn’t have anything to watch and the content is spread across dozens of networks (again), piracy is back on the menu for that specific demographic. But there will always be a demo that will pirate no matter what, be it principles or be it cost.
Yeah I’ve been on and off dabbling in downloads for probably a solid 20 years now and it never really “died”. I frequently download things like games to avoid dropping £40+ on something that might be completely worthless before I’ll throw money at it. And I know steam refunds are pretty good now but they’re not perfect and anything out of steam isn’t affected by them. Hell my most played steam game, rimworld, I initially pirated and dropped before trying again later on and buying. I’m happy to pay for things like streaming services if they actually provide something I want and I don’t have to navigate the bs. If they can’t sort out licensing then that’s not really a me problem, it’s a them problem. After Netflix started price hikes and screwing around with recommendations I dropped it.
Hell my most played steam game, rimworld, I initially pirated and dropped before trying again later on and buying.
Back in the day you could buy Rimworld directly from the developer’s website and that shit was portable. I played it off a flash drive on my high school computers. Did the same thing with FTL as well. Most of my hours in those games are not logged, lol.
Yeah, I don’t think piracy ever came close to dying. It definitely slowed down for a small time when Netflix was the only real player in the streaming space, as a lot of pirates didn’t actually mind paying for a service as long as it worked and had content. For those people, piracy was a service issue, not a cost issue.
Now that Netflix doesn’t have anything to watch and the content is spread across dozens of networks (again), piracy is back on the menu for that specific demographic. But there will always be a demo that will pirate no matter what, be it principles or be it cost.
Yeah I’ve been on and off dabbling in downloads for probably a solid 20 years now and it never really “died”. I frequently download things like games to avoid dropping £40+ on something that might be completely worthless before I’ll throw money at it. And I know steam refunds are pretty good now but they’re not perfect and anything out of steam isn’t affected by them. Hell my most played steam game, rimworld, I initially pirated and dropped before trying again later on and buying. I’m happy to pay for things like streaming services if they actually provide something I want and I don’t have to navigate the bs. If they can’t sort out licensing then that’s not really a me problem, it’s a them problem. After Netflix started price hikes and screwing around with recommendations I dropped it.
Back in the day you could buy Rimworld directly from the developer’s website and that shit was portable. I played it off a flash drive on my high school computers. Did the same thing with FTL as well. Most of my hours in those games are not logged, lol.