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Comment by zaarn | Hacker News Reader

Streaming is a service question. Netflix/D+/AMZN offers you a limited catalogue for 10$ or so a month. You select a movie from their website and it starts playing on your phone or computer.

Pirates offer you everything for free. You select a movie from their website and it starts playing on your phone or computer.

Why would any customer pick the more expensive product? Netflix and Friends need to offer a better service and experience at a low price. Notably that will have to include one subscription for everything.

Steam from Valve has been extremely successfull because they offer a very good service for fairly good prices. Now that EGS is trying to bleed customers, video game piracy is going up again because nobody likes exclusives except those that get money for them.

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> Now that EGS is trying to bleed customers, video game piracy is going up again because nobody likes exclusives except those that get money for them.

Big fat citation needed on the piracy numbers there...

I honestly don't mind timed exclusives because they provide stability and income to the studios that make the games I like. While there's a lot to criticize Epic for, the fact that they essentially guarantee a certain number of sales means devs like Coffee Stain studios can make a risky bet like Satisfactory (basically a 3D Factorio).

As a consumer, it's really not material to me whether I'm launching one or two stores, whereas these studios can be freed from the worry of boom/bust cycles, layoffs, etc.

Why would any customer pick the more expensive product? 1) they don't want to be criminals 2) they want to support the art that they enjoy so that more of it can be made

Since piracy isn't quite the most uncommon criminal activity, I supposed people only care weak about those two and I would bet most people care more about 2 than 1 because people don't see it as criminal activity.

Netflix and Steam don't have a lot in common outside of being a platform for their respective media

Netflix and Stadia (or something like Xbox game pass) are more comparable in my opinion

It's not a direct comparison on purpose. Steam offers a service for relatively low cost and a fairly good user experience. Pirates have difficulties providing the same.

Netflix has a much lower bar on providing that service.

I don't think Stadia has much options for pirates.

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