Japan lost approximately US$30 billion to anime and manga piracy
How are you sure that all people who have watched through piracy would have bought it? Maybe they would sell even less without the hype generated by piracy watchers talking about the show…
Without piracy it would have never gotten this big in the first place
They would probably make more money if they’d just put the shows up for sale for direct download as soon as they air.
Seriously, it’s 2026 for fucks sake. Why can’t I just go to the studio’s website and pay them a dollar (or whatever) to download an MP4?! I can understand the old conservative idiots running old studios with old stupid practices, but why is NO ONE doing this? Especially as studios keep going out of business and reforming? Have they never seen Steam and GOG for game sales? Bandcamp for music?
…rant rant rant…
Okay but if they did that the episodes would all be on pirate sites day one, unlike right now where they don’t do that and the episodes are all on pirate sites day one anyways.
They sure are protecting their profits or whatever lol good job guys.
They want recurring revenue
Zero revenue is still zero revenue.
I’ll just keep downloading my anime then and they’ll still get zero money from me.
They didn’t even make an effort to get most of the shows published in the west. Publishers always have to take it out of their hands and I doubt they’ll stop doing that because someone already pirated it. But even if they did, Anime studios only have themselves to blame. There’s no piracy problem, just a consumer experience problem.
I pirated John Wick on a whim because I was a bored broke college student and saw Keanu Reeves in the lead role. The movie was already out of theaters by that point.
I then introduced the movie to my friends, who all loved it. We then went on to see John Wick 2, 3, and 4 in theatres. I think I even saw 2 twice. And then when they rereleased the first movie for the 10 year anniversary, we paid to go see it again too.
Piracy put John Wick on the map for 10 people and sold 40+ movie tickets.
Pretty sure every pirate stream = 1 bd purchase
RIAA math
Have they considered actually making the content available to stream legitimately on platforms that aren’t dogsh*t? Japan does this with everything. Music is still mostly physical and streaming support especially for older catalogues is poor. Godzilla minus one was out of theatres for a full year before anything resembling a physical release was made available. The biggest thing hurting growth here is gatekeeping.
And even if I shell out for a blu-ray they won’t let me conveniently watch the blu-ray on my laptop or phone. We really need a new standard.
We’re still struggling to get past the access/license phase like it’s the early days of decss and i can’t legally play my physical media because i run an alternative os.
Alternative title: US taxpayers protect US billionaires in third world countries.
