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Comment by sunrunner | Hacker News Reader

"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" -- Gabe Newell [1]

And I think he was largely correct, although the term _service_ seems like it now has to do a lot of heavy lifting as it now encompasses:

- Availability by Company

- Availability by Global Region

- Stream Quality

- Advert Policy (why does the lowest tier need to be ad supported? What am I paying for aside from being upsold?)

- Quality and availability of captions, audio description and any other media accessibility options

[1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/valves-gabe-newell-says-pir...

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Absolutely right!

A week ago I downloaded a couple of movies and shows from Netflix for my 6yo daughter, to watch on a 3hr flight. Worked nicely!

Today we made the return flight. She opens Netflix, and ⅔ of the films have now "expired" with no notice and she can't watch the one she wanted.

For the next flight I'll remember to pirate!

Getting 'em started early. You arr a great dad!

I tried to download something from Netflix recently. The download wouldn’t process. It got stuck partway. Not an issue, I’ll just delete it and redownload.

Nope. There’s a limit to the number of downloads on some content. I wasted mine trying to get the download to even work.

I remember a few years ago when our niece came to visit. One evening, we started watching a movie on Netflix together.

We only made it halfway before bedtime, but since she was coming back in two weeks, we decided to save the rest for her next visit.

Two weeks later, she returned, bouncing with excitement to finally see how the story ended. We opened Netflix, ready to hit play - and lo and behold… the movie had vanished from the catalog.

Be a cool uncle, be a pirate.

> She opens Netflix, and ⅔ of the films have now "expired"

I have given up saving Netflix titles in advance of travel because this has happened to me too many times. What is bizarre is you can only "download" them a certain number of times, despite being expired. So I now cannot download some shows ever again.

Nobody loses money if I cache a Netflix show to my device. The limitation is bizarre.

> Nobody loses money if I cache a Netflix show to my device. The limitation is bizarre.

It wouldn't surprise me if some executive has an irrational fear of millions of people passing ipads around their family and friends with a downloads of movies/series as a way to avoid paying subscriptions.

That's the problem with DRM in everything. Once the levers of power are there, it takes one overeager bean counter or paranoid executive to use them to squeeze out more revenue or exercise additional control. In the era of physical media none of this was possible - I could lend my DVDs to as many people as I want without approval from Reed Hastings.

I've lost access to YouTube premium features just because my phone was not the United States for a couple of weeks.

As soon as I was back on a US ip, features just came right back.

Last I checked, background play with VLC just works regardless of where you are physically located at the time.

> service problem and not a pricing problem

Indeed. Recently we purchased season 1 of a reasonably popular U.S. produced show via Apple TV. When played, it is available only in dubbed French in our region (Canada.) None of the info available beforehand said anything about this. Guess where I obtained the subsequent seasons? I will pay for content but not if you lie, or make me jump through ridiculous hoops.

That reminds me of some passengers I sat on a flight next to once.. they tried to watch something on their iPad, but because we were about to depart from a country foreign to theirs, it got region-blocked...

Not that I pitied them, they were obnoxiously late and boarded with 5 bags (the stiff rectangular bags boutique stores have) of shopping...

In a weird quirk that must be a bug, you can watch the first season of the Good Place in French in the USA but not in Canada.

Why make it complicated? Service means the user experience. If the user needs to do anything other than click pay click play, you done goofed, simple as that.

I cancelled prime when they told me they were putting adverts on

Went to resubscribe, no option given for no adverts, no money from me.

This is what did it for me too. Why would I pay for a crappy UX and ads? But all these companies need numbers to keep going up, so they keep tightening the screws.

It still exists. I'm currently paying for the ad free add on and often cancel and resubscribe to it before I'm about to watch anything.

Annoyingly though, even with that, it'll still show you skipable ads about other shows they have once before you start something in a session.

When I click "subscribe" on my TV it gives me three options, all with adverts

Maybe I could subscribe and take a risk that I could then buy something again, but it tells me they don't want people paying money, they want people watching adverts.

As such the rare amazon exclusives (mainly clarkson's farm) I will get elsewhere.

Compared to say Paramount, which I once again subscribed to through apple-tv a couple of months ago. I watch new Star Trek and South Park episodes, then unsubscribe, suits me fine, far cheaper than how I used to watch Star Trek in the 1990s.

Likewise I'll subscribe to Apple when for all mankind and morning show come back.

If they want me permamently subscribed, they should go back to making 26 episodes a year.

Yes but price has also become a huge part of it netflix raised prices like 5 times in 1 year lol

> "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem"

Maybe so, but if media companies invested in fixing the service problems, the pricing problems would remain, and those keep people away just as effectively, so they're not going to do it.

People don't want to pay what the media companies want to charge, at any level of service.

Not necessarily true, as the success of streaming shows. The problem comes when the unbounded greed of the billionaires in charge leads them to inflate prices beyond their customers' ability and willingness to pay.

Streaming was cheaper than what existed before, and still is. Inflation-adjusted, movies and TV were insanely expensive back then, yet people willingly paid. And the movies were better. Who's greedy, companies wanting to offer nonessential entertainment for a price, or people who want it for free?

Most people do not want it for free. It's just that they are fed up with streaming platforms fragmentation and anticonsumer practices.

Nobody I ever talk to cancel Netflix because it’s too expensive. They cancel it because it runs out of content they care about. Including me. I’m not keeping a sub for that one week a year I find something I enjoy.

It’s absolutely a service problem.

What you described is the same as cancelling because it’s too expensive, you’re just describing the value side of the equation.

That's one way of framing it (pro provider). A pro consumer way of framing it is that it's a service problem.

Since I'm a consumer, not a provider, I side with consumers.

Streaming sucks today -- I should know, I'm subscribed to most platforms.

Really voting with your wallet there.

Anyway I’m not taking platforms side just stating that “I don’t get enough value” and “it is too expensive” are the same thing.

> Really voting with your wallet there.

Sadly, you're right. But it's a Catch-22 here, if I pirated everything people would accuse me of being part of the problem, etc.

I enjoy the moral high ground of paying for everything yet still supporting piracy (with caveats, and not for everything): it makes my position unassailable.

And I disagree with your last statement, as I said it's a framing issue and framing matters. I'm pro consumer, and therefore, it's not the same thing .

Yeah, it's too expensive because the _service_ is too poor. If the service was good, it would be a fair price.

… if it was offered for the same price as the current service.

No? I would be willing to pay more if it actually had things I wanted to watch. Right now it's technically cheap enough where it's not painful when it lapses for months where I don't use it, but it's still a waste of money so I finally cancelled it about half a year ago. I'd be willing to pay a lot more if it had and retained a sizeable library. But it keeps rotating in nuggets of gold with a deluge of cheap trash. At least in Norway, I am aware it varies wildly by region. Not my problem as the customer, that's theirs to solve.

It's both. I canceled when they increased their pricing again (a few months ago), because there's no way I'll pay more when neither the service nor the catalog gets better. I would have kept my subscription if they hadn't increased the price, regardless of any changes to the catalog.

> Nobody I ever talk to cancel Netflix because it’s too expensive.

Frankly this says a lot about you and not much about everyone else

This is absolutely not true.

I pay an ungodly combined amount of money to various streaming services, but must still occasionally resort to TPB. Which "just works", unlike said streaming services.

Within reason, it's not a money problem (within reason; media conglomerates would love for me to sell my kidney in order to watch their premium shows, but that's not going to happen).I would rather just pay for the problem to go away, but Netflix, Disney et al just disagree.

Service problems are usually pricing problems. Advert policy is because people refuse to pay more so to make more money they put in ads. Fragmentation by content/region is also because each service is trying to spend as little as possible on content. If you want to watch unlock video content youd have to pay $100+ a month and people refuse to do that.

Love how this same quote was used in celebration of streaming back in Netflix’s early days as the solution, and now to show the new industry found on those very same ideas as the problem.

Gabe Newell, founder of the largest video game DRM company. Find a way for anyone to download video games for free without risking malware or compromising online play, and see how many people still pay $60 for a new game on Steam.

That's a big if.

More importantly, Gabe is fundamentally right. I'm subscribed to most available streaming services in my country, and when I still cannot find what I want due to obscure reasons (e.g. region locked, or Disney decided to not make it available anywhere for who knows which reason), you can be pretty sure I'll be sailing the seas of the corsair.

It is a service problem.

People can and do download games for free all the time and Steam is still there. People pay for Spotify when music has been openly free since Napster was the zeitgeist.

It's not really possible for MP games, and it's increasingly hard and also dangerous to pirate an SP game. Idk who still does this.

And Spotify is way cheaper than iTunes, which is cheaper than CDs. Neither of them created piracy, but they did have it as leverage.

>Idk who still does this

Not my fault you're out of the loop.

It's almost like the corporate culture of being a bunch of greedy control freaks will push customers away when they have an alternative.

Ehh, while I agree its 70% about having a way more user-friendly experience, theres still 30% which is that the content needs to justify the price. And HBO and Netflix have missed that mark in my opinion.

I cancelled HBO after their price increase a year or two ago after being pretty happy with their service for a long time (though also the service quality had gotten worse). Too many people share my netflix for me to cancel it.

It's honestly wild that in 2025, you can still find better accessibility and quality control in a well-seeded torrent than on half the major platforms

That quote is literally in the article you didn't read.

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