At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen.
The middle of the article however, destroys the author’s case.
Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions.
“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.”
The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the finances of his own show than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers rather than nearly destroying the show as the article claims.
Needless to say, Tom forwent a rebuttal in favor of writing how you can get malware from downloading it…
Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1
Zero sympathy. If they wanted to reduce the amount of illegal streamers, all they’ve got to do is make their content more accessible.
Release it on multiple streaming platforms, not just their own. Ensure its released globally at the same time. And get rid of the geo-blocking.
The lack of reasonable legal alternatives is what drives piracy.
I would need even more. Let me buy it digitally. Not streamed, not with some draconian DRM. Just let me buy the MKV files straight from HBO, and I won’t pirate them.
They have to be aware of how easy it is to rip a blu-ray, yet those are still for sale. So let’s just skip the middleman and give me legal remuxes.
Even (some) porn sites (both paid and free) have drm free download buttons on their sites.
I think these companies should run their own usenet servers, personally. That’s the only way they’re getting my money.
I mean… you can just pirate/download it, it takes literally 10 seconds once you know how… and to know how takes like 2 minutes lol
I wouldn’t be on this subreddit if I didn’t know that.
But I would also buy a lot more media if I could buy it in the way I want
Ensure its released globally at the same time
This was easily the biggest driver. For GOT, I had legal access but I was expected to wait over a month, by which time because the internet - the spoilers would have been completely unavoidable.
Reminds me of Shrek 2. Which premiered 6 months after the US in my country.
I wanted so badly to watch it in cinema, but internet talked about it, friends talked about it, and I had people coming over with burned copies wanting to share it with me…
Yeah, I did not see it in cinema. For some reason it didn’t do well here.
It just seems retarded not to do global releases at this point. Like we’re all connected as hell. How do you expect to make one country wait 6 extra months? Just dumb. Lost revenue for no reason.
And someone who knows better please correct me if I’m wrong, but 10 years ago for streaming is an eternity ago.
I believe back when the show was new and hot you could only watch HBO WITH a cable subscription
There’s a reason people pirated it instead of just subscribing
Ok, I was right: this late 2014 article says they’d finally offer standalone “next year”
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/time-warner-hbo-stand-alone-subscription-netflix,27892.html
Edit: April 2015 is when it started. So quite a bit after GoT started
Yep, which is why many people had this exact experience: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
Exactly
As evidenced by the brief moment in history when Netflix was all that and it drove video piracy all but to extinction.
That´s so insane, right? I mean, they practically had us in the bag with netflix. People either had their own account or chipped in to use someone elses one BUT EITHER WAY, THEY PAID FOR IT! And then came one of the rare moments where more competition was actually bad.
I think with digital content platforms in general, competition means more headaches for customers.
The store front/streaming service is not what people sign up for, but the access to a certain movie, show or game. If the catalog of all available pieces of content gets scattered across multiple services you now have to use multiple apps, pay multiple subscription fees and search through multiple catalogs.
I’d say from a customer’s perspective, increased competition lead to a worse situation.
The thing here is that, for the most part, it’s not actually competition, but a collection of monopolies.
You want to watch show X? You have to go to the streaming service that has the monopoly on show X. It you want to watch that show, in many cases you can’t just substitute it for a different show.
If you have five stores selling all sorts of food, then that’s competition. If you instead have a butcher, a baker, a candy shop, a dairy shop and a fruits/vegetable shop, that’s splitting the turf. You can’t just substitute the ground beef for your burgers with skittles, because the butcher is more expensive than the candy shop.
Caveat to this argument: If you really don’t care about what you watch, then these different streaming services really are interchangable competitors and then the competition is good, because e.g. a shared Disney+ account is much cheaper than the now-non-shareable Netflix account.
This is the case still with Spotify, apple music, deezer, etc… Multiple services with few if any exclusives means almost all music piracy has stopped. Somehow, the record companies continue to survive.
Instead it was destroyed by two greedy fucks rushing the ending two seasons early so they could move on to their next cash grab flop!
Yup. Money was never a problem for D&D. HBO was willing to give them all the time and money they needed. That is a very rare thing in entertainment.
I was gonna say lol. Damn, pirates almost spared us that ending. Too bad.
Game of Thrones was destroyed by the writers lol
The call came from inside the house!!!
The files are in the computer
I mean, theres more than a few reasons Martin hasn’t finished the books. A major one being that the style of writing doesn’t benefit from ending, its mostly a constant series of escalations without ever resolving anything. At a certain point no resolution will ever be satisfying.
Not saying the show ending couldn’t have been better, but like shows like Lost or Heroes, or all those shows like that, no ending could ever live up to the hype generated during its run.
Incredibly relevant: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
It’s been said a million times, but piracy is an accessibility issue. Chasing your favorite shows across streaming platforms is exhausting.
luckily the showrunners were around to finish the job
lolz
They fail to mention that when GoT started in 2011, HBO wasn’t available at all without a cable TV subscription, so people who had already dropped cable didn’t have any other choice. HBO streaming without cable didn’t become available until 2015.
Yeah, I don’t think I’m all that special and I pirated the earlier seasons of GoT. The later seasons I watched legally, because by then it was available on a local streaming site I could well afford. If pirating wasn’t an option it wouldn’t have meant I would’ve spent the money to subscribe to a cable package that included HBO, (which would’ve cost a lot because you had to get some expensive bundle) I just wouldn’t have watched GoT at all. So they didn’t really lose anything from it.
And it’s possible I may not have watched the later seasons legally either, because “eh… too late to get into this thing now.”
HBO is a luxury thing and something like GoT could be the thing that’ll entice people that could afford it and were thinking of getting it anyway to subscribe. The most relevant thing that influences their subscription numbers is the average income of the middle class, not piracy.
Most likely the entire HBO streaming service wouldn’t have taken off, because they offered little to no avenues to consume their content to an increasingly no-cable subscription generation. It’s entirely likely that HBO would’ve died out along with traditional TV.
There was a point in time when GOT was only available via an $80 a month pay tv subscription after the earlier seasons were aired on regular television. Once again, piracy is an access issue - not a theft issue.
Not only was it hard to get the subscription, but it was hard to get it in your country if you weren’t US
Canadian here. Cost us 10 or 20 bucks amonth as hbo was included in a package with other services.
Which as a canadian feels FUCKING WEIRD to brag about our telecoms for a change.
Crazy times
I don’t think that it’s reasonable to have to subscribe for one show. I know what you mean by your comment about Canadian telcos they’re dogshit.
I don’t think got was available in Australia iirc
TIL 2.2bn in profit is basically poverty profit, not even worth doing it … and all because of them evil pirates who would have totally payed for Netflix if they couldn’t pirate it.
However, I really loved all the memes and r/freefolk, great stuff that got exponentially better with each season.
Hell, freefolk got best when the show really started shitting the bed.
Went from funny to straight up brutally hilarious.
the bitching was better than the ending, by a large margin.
Sure. Just ask Bobby B!
(RIP BOBBY B)
GODS I WAS STRONG THEN
Tell ‘em about Bessie’s tits, your magnificence!
God, I missed this.
The cup. That was a whole thing that I completely forgot about lol
That’s exactly right!
I wasn’t invested in the show (it’s just not my cup of soap fantasy) but I was really happy how the last two seasons turned out, my life was better for it (I was sorry for the fans but I was way too busy laughing - refreshing freefolk right after the episode aired was so much fun).
For a while there it was nigh impossible to legally get access to GOT in certain countries. Not to mention, when your only option is an insanity expensive streaming service, and the only thing you want there is one specific show, you’re likely to look for alternatives.
Legally watching HBO in Australia means supporting Rupert Murdoch.
Not even just “certain countries”, in the U S of fuckin A.
The first four seasons, arguably the best seasons, were only available to HBO subscribers. The only way to get HBO was to be a cable subscriber. So you were paying probably $100 a month to watch one show. There is NO WAY that was going to be successful. This was the rise of Netflix. I could pay $100 per year for their content. By 2014/2015 I was getting House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Bojack Horseman, it was a great time.
Now lucky for HBO Game of Thrones is a powerhouse. So what do they do in 2015? They launch HBO Now… as an iOS exclusive. I want to pay you but you cut out half your audience? Guess I’m pirating Season 5 too.
Finally by season 6 HBO Now is available for everyone. I’ve now watched the majority of the show by pirating it. I don’t fault anyone who continued to do so. And this was the American experience. I can only imagine how other countries handled it.
Game of Thrones wasn’t in jeopardy because of piracy. Game of Thrones only succeeded due to piracy. It was a fantastic show (in the early seasons) but doomed to “cancelled too soon” without piracy.
get your credit card stolen.
Let’s see… I don’t provide my credit card to anyone when pirating. The only way they are getting my credit card is breaking into my house. (no, mkv files can’t have viruses).
But I do need to provide my credit card info to HBO, which they store, on their likely poorly secured servers.
The number of credit cards stones from data leaks very likely exceeds the number of them stolen because someone got duped when trying to pirate.
I wasn’t even able to stream it legally in Canada. The only way I could watch it legally was to get a cable subscription and a $15/mo HBO package. Fuck that!
That sounds like a contradiction.
Edit: For everyone else who doesn’t bother to read the rest of the thread: it hadn’t occurred to me that buying HBO doesn’t include video on demand. But now I do. You don’t have to tell me. I know now. What I’m saying is you don’t need to tell me. Because I already know. So there’s no need to tell me, for I already know.
He means one needed cable. It wasn’t available purely as a stream
Oh wow, it hadn’t even occurred to me such a subscription wouldn’t include the ability to watch on demand. That’s so last century.
So he was able to stream it legally, he just wasn’t happy with the requirements for doing so.
Edited to add, I think I’ve misunderstood the original poster. I thought they were saying they could stream it if they had cable. Now I’m not sure that’s what they meant.
For those saying I was being pedantic, I don’t think it’s pedantic to refute that someone said they can’t do a thing when they can. But again, I think I misunderstood.
Basically the experience 10+ years ago: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
STREAM =/= CABLE
Thanks!
How so? There was no streaming option in Canada for GoT. HBO max was not offered. I even tried with a VPN but they wouldn’t accept a Canadian credit card. So piracy was the only option unless I wanted to get cable… But who would want that.
Thanks!
I’d argue it was destroyed, in the last 2 seasons.
Right around when I stopped downloading it
Luckily, the writers got there first.
We were so close to saving the world from the travesty that was the last couple seasons… I weep for what shouldn’t have been.
Good thing they were fast enough to destroy it with the shittiest last season ever.
See, I think that was the plan all along, to totally own all the losers that pirated GoT, by totally spoiling the show for everyone.
GoT never captured me past the first few episodes. What was bad about the ending?
You could build a museum of horrible decisions and fill it with the last two seasons of Game of Thrones. Whether you watched it or not, the show was a cultural touchstone, and the ending retroactively ruined everything that came before. Many shows have started well and ended poorly, but I’d argue that GoT was on pace to be an all-time top ten series, and there was absolutely nothing good to say about how it ended. Bad writing, bad acting, bad production values, sloppy editing, poor visual design, it was both rushed and too slow, and nothing made sense. If you paid someone to deliberately fuck up everything about the show, they would not have been as effective at it because it would have been obvious.
Compare it to this… Watching a highly rated chef come up with the most amazing sounding and looking dinner meal over the course of a few hours. You are anxiously awaiting to take a bite and salivating for that moment. When you finally get served your plate and get to that scrumptious first bite, the biggest wave of disappointment hits and you lose your appetite.
I don’t know how else to explain it
The dish comes out and it’s Spam topped with Kraft singles.
