I stopped pirating games when Steam made buying games safer and more convenient than pirating them, while being affordable and having lots of sales. It didn't get worse despite being a monopoly for a long time, and now we have that plus another service that throws free games at you every week for attention.
I stopped pirating TV shows and movies when for a small monthly fee I could watch most of what I wanted to watch on Netflix. I wouldn't say it was more convenient or better quality on all counts, but it was good enough.
Now I need 10 different streaming subscriptions that keep increasing in price, often only available in dubbed German because I live in Germany, often in worse video/audio quality than it could be, originals getting randomly axed after a cliffhanger, horrible apps, ads being forced on you, no more entire seasons published at once because you can still cancel subscriptions monthly, and don't get me started about offline viewing which never worked properly in the first place.
The limitations are all artificial and it's clear that it's publicly traded companies scraping the bottom of the barrel for infinite growth again.
I stopped pirating TV shows and movies when for a small monthly fee I could watch most of what I wanted to watch on Netflix. I wouldn't say it was more convenient or better quality on all counts, but it was good enough.
Now I need 10 different streaming subscriptions that keep increasing in price, often only available in dubbed German because I live in Germany, often in worse video/audio quality than it could be, originals getting randomly axed after a cliffhanger, horrible apps, ads being forced on you, no more entire seasons published at once because you can still cancel subscriptions monthly, and don't get me started about offline viewing which never worked properly in the first place.
The limitations are all artificial and it's clear that it's publicly traded companies scraping the bottom of the barrel for infinite growth again.