love-the-weirdo-in-the-closet:
The Rise of Netflix Competitors Has Pushed Consumers Back Toward Piracy
You know, it’s almost like that was the fucking problem in the first place you stupid bastards
the absolute need for every online video platform to become just like cable tv despite the fact their success comes from not being like cable tv is just overwhelming
Netflix: Alright guys, we have a fantastic model going! Piracy is down, subscriptions are up, everyone’s making money with these contracts for your show’s streaming rights, and viewers are getting a ton of great content they enjoy. Everybody wins!
Morons: But what if we had our own streaming service just for our content?
Netflix: …I mean in-theory that would work at first, but if everyone’s content was suddenly 100% exclusive and you have to get a dozen subscriptions to a dozen proprietary streaming services just to watch three shows, that defeats a lot of the val–
Morons: And we could charge more than Netflix and Hulu too! We could make even more money!
Netflix: Well at a certain point you’re going to start charging more than people are willing to pay and you’ll start losing more money than you’ll gain. We’ve been doing this since 1997 so we have a pretty good idea of–
Morons: *create streaming sites for every single fucking studio that all charge more money than their content is worth, saturating the market with too many options, almost all of which have too little content to justify their price*
Consumers: Yeah fuck this
Morons: I knew streaming was a dead-end. It never could’ve worked
Netflix: But we were making money! It was working before you fuckers killed the goose laying golden eggs!
Morons: Yeah, but when we wanted more money, it stopped working, and we’re too good at business to make bad decisions, so clearly it was streaming itself that wasn’t working. It’s not our fault the goose couldn’t keep laying eggs after we ate it!
Netflix: What the fuck is wrong with you people
Everything is wrong with people
The free market?? Sabotaging itself??? More likely than you’d think
This is kind of the problem with video games too to an extent. I used to pirate games but once I got Steam I completely stopped because I had access to most of the stuff I wanted at a reasonable price (thank you discounts!). But now with Ubisoft and EA and whoever-else-wants starting their own services and diluting the market… it’s just tiresome. I’d love to play the entire Mass Effect series but I seriously don’t have the energy to juggle my attention between Steam and Origin and to deal with all those bullshit DLCs and let’s not forget that Origin has some shady things about it going on and… I just gave up. I waved Mass Effect goodbye and don’t even try to play it.