Yes kind of. Netflix was like “oh here is that great version. You just pay a fee then get content” and then everyone else was like “oh we want to make money doing that”. And here we are.
Cable is bad. Streaming services are a shitty evolution of it. I guess at least they’re online and don’t require much setup.
I don’t find any of these services worth paying for anymore.
The Expanse under Sci-Fi was stunning. Under Amazon, it's a meh at best. I was incredibly excited for Season Four, watched it, and came away wondering if Amazon had replaced everybody but the actors with a mixture of part-time interns and bags of slightly off-date produce.
Haven't bothered with Season Five. Just don't care.
Same for mainstream TV.
On the other hand, I watched a short (Overlord) set in the SCP universe done by an independent filmmaker, and loved it.
They didn't try and explain things to me. Just straight into the story. The characters behaved about as realistically as I would expect, and showed that the scriptwriter actually did some research. I would pay for full-length movies with this level of storytelling and production value.
In short: I don't need to pirate anything, because there's nothing I feel is worth my time to watch.
These content/streaming companies are just making things much worse over the cable situation and will certainly force a certain number of people into piracy, and a certain number will just quit watching, and a certain number of people will just keep on building their own Plex server, even if they have to buy the DVDs at retail (which is certainly not a bad thing). The problem is some of the new content remains streaming only, not available at retail, so back to piracy you go.
Congratulations to all the decision makers in this industry.
Edit: an example of what I'm talking about:
I'm a USA resident and a big fan of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For years I was able to buy a "pass" to stream all of practice, qualifying, and the race, from the FIA (who runs the race). A year or to ago - nope, no more, you have to sign up with "Motor Trend TV" or something like that, buy a subscription, and stream it from there. Not going to happen, I don't need another monthly subscription service that may make it difficult to cancel. I can literally NOT give the FIA my money to stream their race. So what do I do? You know ...