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Good thing they were fast enough to destroy it with the shittiest last season ever.
See, I think that was the plan all along, to totally own all the losers that pirated GoT, by totally spoiling the show for everyone.
Let's be real. HBO wanted to hold on to their cash cow for as long as possible, but D&D just shat all over the last season to get that sweet Star Wars cash.
Nobody was on-board with anything in that last season except D&D, who just wanted to finish it off as fast as possible. Not even the actors.
The hilarious thing is how their own bungling of the last season cost them the Star Wars gig. Maybe if they'd actually put in some effort instead of half assing it, they'd have gotten the job. But then again, the show was on a downward spiral since the end of Season 4, and Dumb and Dumber's only talent was adapting the books really well (and even then, they still fudged details), so I suppose this was bound to happen.
Dumb and Dumber’s only talent was adapting the books really well
Honestly, I want more Hollywood writers who are good at adapting books, instead of hating the source material and doing a terrible job winging it.
I can't count the number of TV shows ruined by Hollywood writers usurping the universes from multi-million dollar and very successful source material, just to create their own shitty version themselves. In fact, it's much easier to adapt source material, so I don't even understand why they don't do it out of pure laziness. If they could just drop their fucking egos for a bit, they could be as famous as D&D.
Those clever bastards. Cheating the pirates by content enshittification.
GoT never captured me past the first few episodes. What was bad about the ending?
That they yhrew away all the rules they established before like traveling now took 0 hours and soon. All of this because the last book wasn't written yet so they had to write some story themselves and failed misserably.
HBO told the show runners(D&D) they could take as long as they wanted to finish the series. D&D had just landed jobs at the helm of a new Star Wars trilogy so they were eager to wrap up Thrones and start raking in that Disney cash. They made the last season shorter than other seasons, it sucked and they ended up losing the Star Wars deal.
Considering the star wars stuff that's been coming out, if you told me they were responsible for it, i'd believe you
I read an essay where the author argued that in the first few seasons, the GRR Martin material, World events happened and the characters were forced to adapt and react.
Once the television writers took over, the dynamic flipped so characters' actions forced the World itself to change and react, which is apparently how most television writing works since television writing revolves mostly around characters.
That's a pretty inelegant way to explain it, sorry, but I think the idea feels pretty accurate to me. There is a definite point where you can tell when the staff writers have to start plotting for themselves.
I remember people knew the ending due to leaks about a year ahead of time and claimed it was all BS since it was so ridiculous. We were all wrong
A surprising amount went wrong.
While there are a sea of complaints, the biggest for me was that all of the characters stopped having internal logic. Take Jamie, he had a character arc moving from a vain knight avoiding responsibility and having an incestuous relationship with his sister, to having depth, showing that he was wracked with guilt for breaking his oath to help people. Falling in love with a woman for her character and who she was. Being responsible and honorable again. Then the last season came around and he dropped all of his growth to be with his sister.
It's like D&D decided that there would be a cool scene of him dieing with Cersi and didn't care how he got there.
You could build a museum of horrible decisions and fill it with the last two seasons of Game of Thrones. Whether you watched it or not, the show was a cultural touchstone, and the ending retroactively ruined everything that came before. Many shows have started well and ended poorly, but I'd argue that GoT was on pace to be an all-time top ten series, and there was absolutely nothing good to say about how it ended. Bad writing, bad acting, bad production values, sloppy editing, poor visual design, it was both rushed and too slow, and nothing made sense. If you paid someone to deliberately fuck up everything about the show, they would not have been as effective at it because it would have been obvious.
The show reached a point where they'd surpassed where the books were in the narrative and things fell apart. The political intrigue, backstabbing, and subversive nature of the story was done away with in favour of forcing plot points through to get everything wrapped up, with no consideration made on why those characters would act in the way they did.
Zero sympathy. If they wanted to reduce the amount of illegal streamers, all they've got to do is make their content more accessible.
Release it on multiple streaming platforms, not just their own. Ensure its released globally at the same time. And get rid of the geo-blocking.
The lack of reasonable legal alternatives is what drives piracy.
As evidenced by the brief moment in history when Netflix was all that and it drove video piracy all but to extinction.
This is the case still with Spotify, apple music, deezer, etc... Multiple services with few if any exclusives means almost all music piracy has stopped. Somehow, the record companies continue to survive.
I would need even more. Let me buy it digitally. Not streamed, not with some draconian DRM. Just let me buy the MKV files straight from HBO, and I won't pirate them.
They have to be aware of how easy it is to rip a blu-ray, yet those are still for sale. So let's just skip the middleman and give me legal remuxes.
I remember here in the Netherlands that you could only watch HBO through a specific internet provider (ziggo-Vodafone). I'd have to switch goddamn ISP's to pay for their show. That gave me all the justification to pirate the shit out of it.
Instead it was destroyed by two greedy fucks rushing the ending two seasons early so they could move on to their next cash grab flop!
Yup. Money was never a problem for D&D. HBO was willing to give them all the time and money they needed. That is a very rare thing in entertainment.
Incredibly relevant: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
It's been said a million times, but piracy is an accessibility issue. Chasing your favorite shows across streaming platforms is exhausting.
I've always lived by lord GabeN's "piracy is a service issue. You have to offer a better experience than the pirates"
There was a point in time when GOT was only available via an $80 a month pay tv subscription after the earlier seasons were aired on regular television. Once again, piracy is an access issue - not a theft issue.
TIL 2.2bn in profit is basically poverty profit, not even worth doing it ... and all because of them evil pirates who would have totally payed for Netflix if they couldn't pirate it.
However, I really loved all the memes and r/freefolk, great stuff that got exponentially better with each season.
They fail to mention that when GoT started in 2011, HBO wasn't available at all without a cable TV subscription, so people who had already dropped cable didn't have any other choice. HBO streaming without cable didn't become available until 2015.
For a while there it was nigh impossible to legally get access to GOT in certain countries. Not to mention, when your only option is an insanity expensive streaming service, and the only thing you want there is one specific show, you’re likely to look for alternatives.
Not even just "certain countries", in the U S of fuckin A.
The first four seasons, arguably the best seasons, were only available to HBO subscribers. The only way to get HBO was to be a cable subscriber. So you were paying probably $100 a month to watch one show. There is NO WAY that was going to be successful. This was the rise of Netflix. I could pay $100 per year for their content. By 2014/2015 I was getting House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Bojack Horseman, it was a great time.
Now lucky for HBO Game of Thrones is a powerhouse. So what do they do in 2015? They launch HBO Now... as an iOS exclusive. I want to pay you but you cut out half your audience? Guess I'm pirating Season 5 too.
Finally by season 6 HBO Now is available for everyone. I've now watched the majority of the show by pirating it. I don't fault anyone who continued to do so. And this was the American experience. I can only imagine how other countries handled it.
Game of Thrones wasn't in jeopardy because of piracy. Game of Thrones only succeeded due to piracy. It was a fantastic show (in the early seasons) but doomed to "cancelled too soon" without piracy.
Bullshit. While it was the most pirated show no doubt, It did drive HBO subscriptions and BluRay sales. The drastic fall off in show quality after season 4 did it in.
get your credit card stolen.
Let's see... I don't provide my credit card to anyone when pirating. The only way they are getting my credit card is breaking into my house. (no, mkv files can't have viruses).
But I do need to provide my credit card info to HBO, which they store, on their likely poorly secured servers.
The number of credit cards stones from data leaks very likely exceeds the number of them stolen because someone got duped when trying to pirate.
mkv files can’t have viruses
That's not true. Though it's harder to do than your standard virus-in-an-exe.
which they store, on their likely poorly secured servers
That most likely isn't true, these sites don't store your credit card info, they leave it to the payment processors precisely because they don't want to deal with securing the data.
I wasn't even able to stream it legally in Canada. The only way I could watch it legally was to get a cable subscription and a $15/mo HBO package. Fuck that!
It was only possible to watch GoT in the Netherlands when you were with one specific provider. That's what caused piracy.
Luckily, the writers got there first.
We were so close to saving the world from the travesty that was the last couple seasons… I weep for what shouldn’t have been.
The show was destroyed by two mediocre fuck face showrunners who were more interested in harassing the naked extras on set then running the production lol
I don't think HBO was even available in my country when GoT started. Towards the end it might've been. But you still had to also have the TV service from a specific ISP, not JUST the Internet service. Now there are more options, but it's still always bundled with some other shit you don't need.
As an example, the only reason there was ever any interest in Top Gear stateside was because of piracy. In my youth, that was the only way to watch it, and it showed the BBC that there was an interest, which led to it being made available through legitimate means in the US.
Piracy isn’t about free shit.
Damn, we should have tried harder to destroy it before Season 8 aired then. /s
It was the most pirated series, because it was also incredibly popular.