90% of people I know probably couldn't set this up. And the other 10% would spend more time dicking around with the set up than they would using netflix or the other services.

GabeN is not correct. Piracy is a money problem. Free is very enticing.

> "Piracy is a service problem." Valve's Gabe Newell said that years ago, touting the success of Steam, his online video game distribution service.

The UX is crap; the info architecture is obscure; it doesn't work well on macOS (or at all if I use the wrong file system); it uses confusing labels for the stash of stuff I've already bought. I don't use it often enough to know if my usr/pwd is still valid (it is, fortunately). It had some slightly odd 2FA type thing the last time I logged in. It just gives me the impression that it wants to hide games from me that I've already bought and to make new ones hard to find. I'd rather have discs in boxes taking up space (tbf I also collect vinyl so maybe I'm just anachronistic?)

The only good thing going for it is that it doesn't ever email me junk.

But I gave in after several years, and now I'm a quite happy Steam user on Linux. It works as advertised, and the only issue I have is that I haven't found a way to filter games for «Linux support» and a genre at the same time. I've used EXT4 and BTRFS as file systems while using Steam, and never had any issues with that either.

I'm inclined to agree with Gabe. I've never spent as much money on games as after I got Steam. It makes it really easy to get a new game. Without Steam, I'd probably just go without. I have lots of things to spend my time on, and sometimes I'm even a little bit bummed that wasting time on games is an option on Linux these days...

Though I also buy from Humble Bundle and GOG. I prefer GOG whenever possible, if it's DRM free. Sometimes it's the most expensive option though.

Even for the in-house games, you have to be naive to trust any sort of promise from a commercial software product that isn't in a contract. Notch supposedly once promised that Minecraft would eventually become open source; well that plan evaporated when Microsoft waved a few billion dollars in front of him. Maybe he meant it at the time he said it, but that doesn't count for anything.

many new games are free and rely on in-game transactions tied to an account outside of steam

There are no restrictions on the games I bought through steam that actually get in the way of me playing them - and there are a lot of conveniences offered like having access to my entire library on any machine with steam installed, or playing the games installed on my machine pretty much indefinitely offline. And being able to verify my game files and have them automatically fixed / updated

The games i bought a long time ago and still play have more than earned the money i spent on them anyway. if steam dies and i need to buy them again, i will and i will be happy to. if i cant find them anywhere because the games themselves died, ill make an image of my PC before upgrading it or uninstalling them and play them offline in a VM

there might be an itch here or there i cant scratch for whatever reason, but i can always buy a new game inspired by the same genre which is usually more fun than trying to recreate a nostalgic feeling anyway

Valve makes a lot of money from the steam store. They’re not going anywhere. There are competitors like gog games that sell them without DRM. You download the games anyways so I’m sure a solution will be figured out if Valve starts to have issues.

Steam provides a pretty seamless experience for gaming, and it provides useful services to developers as well. Then you have things like the steam workshop and marketplace.

And for minecraft being open source: who cares? Gamers want games that are good and fun to play. There are very few open source games that are actually fun to play.

Well, the huge dicourse in consoles atm is digital and ownership. There were several scares over the years (some that went through, some that backpedeled) on storefronts closing down and no longer being able to buy older games as a result, in a market where retro gaming is being flooded by scalpers selling stuff at 20x markups. Console players are feeling uneasy with the advent of there being "digital only" variants sneaking back in, and cloud gaming is getting bigger each year.

Maybe this is just a cacophony of old fans not getting with the times, but it seems like a signifigant enough sentiment that "so what" seems overly dismissive.

>And for minecraft being open source: who cares?

older minecraft players apparently. Granted, it hasn't really stopped their creativity and servers, so in practice it doesn't change much. But I wouldn't be surprised in some microfose move years down the line angering that playerbase.

Again, an oddly dismissive take for something that has historically happened. It's easy to say "I don't care it's convinent" until it isn't.

you found one?? please share

Other than that I can’t really think of anything other than good clones like OpenTTD or crappy clones like minetest.

Maybe Dwarf Fortress in the future if tarn or his brother open source it.

Granted, you have to buy the game to make use of these open source engines legally. But these open source engines free you from the limitations of DRM, Windows/Wine and run better than the original engines (support modern resolutions, innumerable bug fixes, etc.)

I've been using steam for over a decade and have always enjoyed that it works the way i expect a computer application to work. i can right-click on things to get to their properties and other options, i can point it to games i have installed that i didnt buy through steam and they appear next to my steam games in my library seamlessly

the store UI is.. not the most intuitive thing for me, but it seems consistent. it is very rare that i am browsing steam store to begin with, though. I am usually searching for a specific game directly, which i never have trouble finding if it's in their collection. I also like that i can add any games im interested in to a wish list and they notify me when it's on sale

i used to edit my settings in a config file in counterstrike, which required "tampering" with local files but in a way that ultimately resulted in compliant files. Finding that file was an obscure path to navigate, ill give you that - but again the organization is still consistent. all files for one game can be found in one folder with the games name on it. you can manually delete that folder and effectively uninstall the game. you can even do a custom reinstall by selectively deleting files from that folder and ask steam to replace the missing items and it will. For example, to reinstall a game without losing your save files.

Not trying to invalidate your experience, but your comment caught me by surprise because your dislike seems to be well rationed and thought out - ie genuine - so i just found it interesting

Steam provides a lot of value.

But, I will also admit that I'm a bit biased against steam due to using PC's for a lot of Visual Novels. And their VN submissions have always been a lottery of some sorts, to the confusion of readers and developers alike. Nothing worse than having an existing product on the store and then suddenly having a sequel to the product rejected, while the first product still sits on shelves.

the other problems are personal preferences that aren't universal

few things in life are. But we're on the internet, so we inevitably here a lot fo "personal preferences", often exagerrated to the point where it sounds like it's the worst thing in the world.

GabeN is partially correct: It's a money & service problem. It's money for some, service for others, sometimes a bit of both. During college I had no money, so the issue for me was money. Once I got a job after college it was service: I didn't want to drive to music store & hope they had the CD in stock that I was looking for, not when I could definitely get it in 5 minutes online. Similar issue for videogames: I didn't want to spend $30-$60 for a game I couldn't return, when my computer might choke on it & not run or if half an hour in I realized it was crap. On top of which I might have to drive around to half a dozen stores to find a copy. That was a mixture of service & money.

These days it's faster for me to pay $1 for a song than pirate it, and I can instantly buy, download, and return a game in an hour if it either doesn't run or I hate it immediately.

Free is enticing, but so is convenience & instant gratification.

However, people professing this quote everywhere should note that it's very hard to compete with "free infinite media" for those with the knowledge to pirate. So don't be surprised if instead of catering to that crowd that they instead focus on people who can't or don't want to pirate. It's a double edged sword. If I do pirate, I don't pretend I do it in some effort to make the product better. I do it accepting the risk that they may never choose to cater to me.

It's so frustrating to see that 90%of the shows I want to see are unavailable on Netflix. Video streaming is just so fragmented right now. And they try to compensate with a bunch of low quality Netflix original shows.

Why can't they just replicate what has been done in audio streaming? Spotify is what Netflix should have been. It's been years I no longer need to pirate music.

that's where the "service problem" sentiment falls apart. All companies want to be this monopoly for you with no red tape over multiple governments. But of course, companies get the best cuts (100%) from hosting it themselves and countries (and media licensed) will never agree on what's okay.

In this case, piracy is a way around a world that hasn't quite caught up with how the internet works yet. I wonder in a few decades if governments worldwide create enough enforcement on this for it to be just as inconvinent as trying to steal a CD.

I have a shared folder on my home network where I download stuff from 1-click hosters with jdownloader. I get the links all on one platform.

I got that money. I paid for Netflix once but now I can't remember the last show I watched made by them. Instead I'd have to pay for at least 3 other platforms to watch those few shows I watch throughout the year. Sometimes I'd even have to use a VPN to get it in the original language.

It only is a service problem for me.

(there is a bit revenge for their inability to provide a single platform in there too)

A service problem and a money problem are almost the same thing. Time is money, and I value my free-time very high. People will pay to not have to spend time to find the free.

Plug the PC up to display and presto.

I never have to leave my sofa. I don't have to dick around with plugging and unplugging my PC. No keyboards to manage. No OS or software to keep updated.

Your solution is easier than some other options but I'll stick with mine.

Then have a firmware update ad some advertising to the experience.

Sure beats my experience of pulling out my 12 oz keyboard plus touchpad bluetooth keyboard connected to a real PC.

I'm a 60-year-old (Do I win a kewpie doll?), and have the tech chops to pirate, but I don't want to.

It's important for me to live a life of Personal Integrity. That stance gets a lot of chuckles with this crowd, but it's of critical importance, in my life.

I'm fortunate, in being able to afford streaming services, but find the profusion and variety to be a mess.

I like AppleTV Channels, and the way that the AppleTV Watch Now app aggregates the apps. Amazon has something similar, that my wife uses.

Unfortunately, it looks like these knuckleheads can't agree on common licensing models. I don't want the "You can have any color you want, as long as it's black." approach of cable bundlers, but I also don't like the myriad ways of subscribing, or, quite frankly, the ever-changing prices.

They need to get their shit together.

Of course, what was (past tense) also annoying was paying $100/month for a cable bundle that I rarely watched.

It's also the case that I have access to a ton of video and don't consider much to be "must see."

And to the topic at hand, I may very well cancel Netflix one of these days. There's some stuff I haven't watched yet but after I get through that I may well drop it.

If it's just as fringe as you say, and i agree, then we shouldn't entertain the idea that media is (or was, in early 2000s before Netflix) losing that much money to pirating. As i'm sure now that people start migrating to less legal avenues for digital media we'll start seeing a resurgence of cries over lost profits due to piracy.

I think you underestimate how many people pirated things before netflix existed.

Nope. Just tried it. Literally not. It gives me the option to play movies, but nope. Can only play trailers.

There are addons, but they seem to use Torrent. I have no interest in streaming up to other people and redistributing the data. Is that set up automatically, or does it reuse my internet connection without informing me?

Also, with Netflix, I don't have to worry about copyright issues. Does streamio make that as easy?

None of this sounds literally as easy.

And again, literally cannot play a movie I can easily play on Netflix.

This view is very US-centric.

In most of the "rest of the world", netflix either doesn't exist or has a very very limited show list (even here, in a relatively developed EU country), and piracy literally is the only way to get a lot of the very popular shows.

And if you already pirate 3 of the 5 shows that you watch, why would you pay for the other 2, that are available on netflix, if you can just pirate those too?

I don't mean to be rude, but in the grand scheme of things the other countries don't quite matter as much, financially speaking. And those smaller parts of the world pirating isn't a big loss. Similar to the video game industry in Japan; some games may get an overseas following, but if the domestic market is slacking, that studio may not get the chance to make a sequel for those overseas fans.

So back to the US-centric sentiment: American audiences don't have the excuse 99% of the time of "this content is region blocked in my country", so the sentiment here shifts to "I don't want to manage 4 streaming services".

In many ways, pirating is like any subscription service: signing on is a difficult decision (whether financially or technically), but once you're there and all caught up with the UI, using it again is the default move for watching your next show/movie.

In my country (slovenia) there is a very good local torrent tracker + a lot of people use the few larger general torrent sites, and even "grandpas" can use them, if their "computer-savy" kid installs them a torrent client, and shows them where to search.

In you go further down the balkans, you can find full movies even on youtube, especially local ones (because youtube doesn't remove them). Not that long ago, you could also buy or rent pirated cds/dvds literally from street vendors and "movie clubs" (think blockbuster, but smaller, more local and pirated).

Since they're in a low power-security environment, there's a lot of unexpected on-off cycles. Anyway, the whole thing still worked for them until recently and as things started failing (as they inevitably do with this max jank thing I've made them) they just figured out how to work with it.

At first, they ran out of content, so they learned how to go get it on ThePirateBay and find the right mirror.

Then OpenSubtitles (which was integrated with XBMC) stopped working on it for some reason, so they would go manually get srt files and stick them on the USB drive (visible over Samba from the network).

Then as the local external drive started failing, they used the home desktop's samba mounted drive (that I'd set up earlier).

Hilariously, the gradual collapse of the system seems to have worked as a natural training regimen, and now they're fully equipped with knowledge. So now they've got one of our old desktops in the living room hooked up to the TV, a small bluetooth keyboard lying on the coffee table, and watch pirate video on the TV.

The whole thing is positively comical because I pay for all the services so this isn't necessary at all. But availability is not complete and I'm sure it tickles them to be able to do this stuff themselves.

Anyway, thought it was a funny story. They're in their late 60s but they're doctors and last I knew, not particularly tech-savvy, so I am both proud and highly entertained.

I come from country where intellectual property was treated as a western joke.

Children younger than 10 learned how to pirate - by themselves, without knowing even English. A lot of people still can do that, and it's quite easy to find out how.

Can piracy be the bridge to tech literacy? Sure.

“It's easier just to pirate than keep up with all these streaming services.”

Which seems false on its face. Every TV has access to all these streaming services built in. Or Roku devices, which take moments to set up. This is unrelated to whether people are capable of learning, but I am even bearish on that when it comes to the average person in the current piracy environment.

You mean those same TVs and devices that plaster your screen with ads, arbitrarily modify the UI, suddenly make certain shows unavailable, spy on what you're watching, require unwieldy DRM, take minutes to turn on, interrupt your relaxation time to run "updates", randomly brick themselves, become obsolete in a short several years, and generally dictate your experience based on short-sighted corporate whims? Visiting someone else's house and seeing the garbage behavior they put up with from their "smart TV" is as mindblowing as seeing someone using a web browser without adblock!

"Piracy is easier" refers to the experience after you've gone through the work of setting up your own entertainment system. Setting it up certainly does require an investment of time and self-actualization, which for sure is more effort than searching "netflix" and following their "conversion" path. But after that, things just generally work without all of the corporate hassles. I don't foresee everyone choosing to make running a libre media setup one of their hobbies, but most people will know someone who has...

and the thread here as a whole is rebuking the argument that Netflix is losing money because people are pirating. Most people don't or can't go through this work, so that likely isn't the reason why Netflix is seeing drops.

Current market wise, I wouldn't be surprised if the Netflix situation is people canceling their membership to spend that money on a different streaming service, and then swapping between friends to get the union of shows for a similar $/month. This would explain both pushes of membership going down, plus them wanting to crack down on sharing.

ehh, It's more like a speedbump than a storm. There's too much money in the game for it to end up being caught in a hurricane.

I just see the other side on how piracy can also harm more niche mediums and discourage businesses from even bothering to compete, which is why I can't even say piracy is a 'meh' at worst.

The manga indusry outside of Japan has this problem in that it's 5+ years behind the already decade outdated online solution for digital comics. Several JP storefronts for phyical and digital manga, but that is almost non-existent in English. Manga is fantranslated so fast that there's no incentive to bother having official localizers outside of the already huge works. Easier to cash in pennies on anime adaptations and merch sales afterwards.

There are lists of how much it would cost to have all the streaming services, and for a LONG time, it was illegal for cable companies to prevent you from selecting the channels you would like a-la-carte... but it did NOT prevent them from charging too much for each channel to make that an unworkable...

"You want JUST HBO? Sure, no problem, if you don't buy it in the bundle, the individual channel cost is $29 per month!"

---

That is THE failure of "regulation" ; THE GOVERNMENT WILL MANDATE THROUGH LOBBIED REGULATION THAT ONE MUST HAVE THIS [SERVICE] - HOWEVER, WE WILL NOT REGULATE HOW MUCH YU CAN BE CHARGED FOR THE SERVICE, BUT WE WILL FINE AND PUNISH YOU IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THIS SERVICE.

The things this person lists are things I agree with, however. I actually have Amazon Prime Video but still enjoyed watching my friend's pirated copies on Plex, because there is no way to force-disable shitty compression levels, even if I have gigabit Internet.

Also, my friend can make sure their video library never changes or goes away, and that certain rarer content is archived forever, not subject to the changes of George Lucas or Disney editing out "problematic" content.

ZFS pools with full backups, redundant hardware, and highly available servers is not normal.

Installers are a thing on windows, on Ubuntu you can install software with apt. It wasn't packaged for my distro so I downloaded an archive unzipped and dropped it in /opt

Not sure why anyone would absolutely need to understand Kuberetes or even docker.

Plugging a PC up to a display has been a better TV for a while now.

I'm sure the industry will come up with new ways to intrude on the internet again to stop this before they get together to make another platform which would allow the audience to download everything in one place.

That's easy.

Most of my friends have no idea what Tor is. Many don't know the Pirate Bay, and most of those who know bittorrent haven't configured it to get past their firewall.

But you know what they do know? Turning the TV on, going to Roku, searching for a movie/show, and watching it in whatever app Roku suggests.

But if we're talking about the people who are buying all the streaming services, it's currently easier to pirate. I get that you haven't taken two seconds to do any amount of research on the matter and that complete lack of any experience whatsoever gives you a sense of expertise to call other people blind and absurd, but consider that maybe you just don't know what you're talking about?

The easy option will cost you 24000 over 10 years. If you earn 20 bucks an hour or less like near half of America this represents an additional 1200 labor hours or a full time job for 30 weeks.

You even call Netflix the easy option which is all I'm saying.