this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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the fact that Gabe said "piracy is a service problem" fifteen fucking years ago, and none of these fuckwits in content distribution have learned this at all is a source of continuous astonishment to me.
I havent pirated a single game since i installed steam 20 years ago
There was a short period of time where netflix was good enough so i didnt pirate movies or tv shows either
It's 100% a service problem
Same story here.
Loved Netflix at first. I used to pirate a lot of tb shows and movies and then completely stopped once Netflix became decent.
Then they turned to shit and I'm back to pirating.
But not only that, I'm actually PAYING to pirate content because its a service that just combines all content from Netflix, Disney, apple, etc into one singular app that you can stream from any android device with the app.
It can have pretty shit quality sometimes, but at least I can watch it.
I will pay for shit if it's easy access.
Fuck Netflix, Amazon, apple, Disney, etc. greedy fucks.
The funny thing is, i actually have legit access to some paid streaming services. But because i refuse to download their app or connect my tv to the internet, i'm limited to 720p in the browser....
So i just pirate the shit anyway
What do you use?
Not OP but I use IPTV. Roughly $150 for 6 months. I have over 9000 live channels and access to roughly 52000 movies, including movies that hit theatres maybe a couple weeks later.
The only games I pirate are those that either :
_ are completely abandoned by their publishers and literally unavailable through other means
_ are stuff I already bought long ago and this is the most convenient way to get them to run (I have occasionally bought games again if it was cheap and convenient)
_ have turned to such shitty business models I don't want to give a cent to the publishers (and I almost don't even do that one anymore since usually they've found a dozen more ways to turn the game to shit anyway).
So yeah. Totally agree with the service problem.
There is a lot of SEGA product that I would buy, if it was DRM-free. Shin Megami Tensei, Sonic Origins, and more. I don't let DRM and rootkits onto my PC, so I either pirate that stuff or just engage with someone else's product. Either way, SEGA has lost hundreds of dollars.
The last game I pirated was Driver: San Francisco a couple years ago, because you couldn't (still can't? maybe?) buy it anywhere except for like, second-hand physical media, and I am not going through that hassle. I can't even remember the game I last pirated before that (Probably Sims 4, because fuck EA and fuck that laundry list of DLC -- but I can't be sure).
Music, movies, and TV shows, though? Oh yeah, baby, that's a weekly activity now. Netflix I dumped many years ago when the fracturing of content to twenty different streaming services happened, and Spotify I dumped just this last year for a few different reasons (the CEO donating to AI weapons programs, introducing a fuckass AI DJ, ICE ads, getting fed up with songs I either can't find or can find but aren't available in my region, or could listen to and enjoyed and then having them suddenly become unavailable, etc...)
I'm sure, someday, Steam will enshittify. Probably shortly after Gabe dies -- and it will be a dark day for me and millions of gamers worldwide. But for now, I'm more than happy to let Gabe empty my wallet with sales and convenience, because the gettin's been good for a couple decades and will likely remain so for another couple. I can't say the same for music, movies, and TV; I don't know if I'll ever end up paying for them again unless the distributors involved sort their shit out.
At least, Steam has some pretty good followers should they enshittify. Gog, humblebundle and epic are all poised to take over should steam shit the bed.
They aren't quite there yet, but at least you don't need a subscription for any of them and can just add them to a unifying launcher like heroic etc.
I get stuff on Gog sometimes. They do some things right (no need for a client, no DRM stance, good compatibility support, chasing down lost rights for old games).
But unfortunately they can never get more than scraps from the big publishers because those will never agree to release their newer games without DRM.
And let's be clear, I wouldn't want them to go back on this, but that will make it hard for them to compete.
Interestingly, at the beginning everything on Humble was offering DRM-free options too. And then after a while they gave us some bullshit about their policy not being "DRM-free" but "DRM-agnostic", which means, publisher can choose whether to use no DRM, or DRMs. Such a strong policy, thank you Humble.
I think a bronze lining to WW3 or a 2nd American Civil War, is that DRM-free and telemetry-free media would become very popular. Troops need their entertainment without comms, and civvies might have constant internet shortages. Thus, the markets would have to adapt to that reality.
Humble Bundle already enshittified, and Epic was evil to begin with.
Lol at including the pre-enshittified store
There was also a brief period when spotify was good enough.
Same for me with Steam. I used to pirate everything gaming and only once I got Steam and a steady job, pirating stopped.
As for media, nop. Pirating never really stopped. When using Netflix is much more annoying than using myflixerz.to, you wont be coming back to pay for a service that is fundamentally crap.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the clip OP is referencing: https://youtu.be/EQweFurRz4g
Yeah, I agree it still is. Like I am not going to subscribe for $10+ a month for a single show on a single streaming service. I need at least 3 for about $6 for it to even seem reasonable at a minimum. Like if the more streaming services were more like Movies Anywhere, I would love that. Like this service works better for me, I will give them my money type shit.
In the grand scheme of things, they don't really care about piracy.
Yes, they could greatly reduce piracy by making their service affordable, available, and convenient ... but they would lose more profits from doing that than they currently do from piracy. They know enshittifying their service will result in increased piracy ... but they also know that it will result in extracting increased money from the people who do pay. And, overall, their profits are still higher despite the higher piracy levels.
(Heck, in some ways piracy has been shown to be overall beneficial. To some degree, it's free advertising, helping media spread through word of mouth. And maybe while they missed out on a media sale or subscription, they still end up making money from that pirate with a merchandise sale or something.)
The recording industry did.
Who pirates music anymore. Everyone has one of the streaming services for it, because they all have functionally all of the music. There's no exclusive releases on one platform or another.
Well, maybe there is, I haven't looked in a while. Maybe they're enshitifying that too.
Somehow the TV/movie shit heads can't figure the same thing out.
I assure you, the enshittification of music streaming services is already here. Even before Spotify went completely to shit there were some things that just couldn't be found on the platform, and others still that I used to listen to suddenly becoming unavailable.
I, and a lot of other people, pirate music now because (among other reasons) having a hard drive full of MP3s or FLACs is something no corporation can arbitrarily decide to take away from you at any time.
Yeah, I use Navidrome server. You can even host it on your phone in Termux (assumes Android). And I mean, in the easiest damn way possible.
apt install navidrome, and runnavidrome. Though I recommend checking out the config options.At least the Address option, Android has no firewall.