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Game of Thrones was nearly "destroyed" by pirates illegally streaming HBO content (www.forevergeek.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen.

The middle of the article however, destroys the author's case.

Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions.

“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.”

The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the finances of his own show than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers rather than nearly destroying the show as the article claims.

Needless to say, Tom forwent a rebuttal in favor of writing how you can get malware from downloading it...

Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

And someone who knows better please correct me if I'm wrong, but 10 years ago for streaming is an eternity ago.

I believe back when the show was new and hot you could only watch HBO WITH a cable subscription

There's a reason people pirated it instead of just subscribing

Ok, I was right: this late 2014 article says they'd finally offer standalone "next year"

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/time-warner-hbo-stand-alone-subscription-netflix,27892.html

Edit: April 2015 is when it started. So quite a bit after GoT started

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep, which is why many people had this exact experience: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Exactly

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It started with HBO Now (or was it Go?) but you still needed a cable subscription to use it and then a year or two later they had the standalone version but it was a mess as some people had to use one but not the other depending on how they subscribed to HBO.