Foxtel quiet on impact of Game of Thrones leak on its cut-price deal to tackle piracy
Pay-TV service Foxtel has refused to be drawn on the impact of a major online leak of the first four episodes of Season 5 of Game of Thrones, after admitting its new online pricing was an “experiment” to tackle piracy.
The embarrassing leak has been described by piracy monitoring website Torrent Freak as “without doubt one of the most prominent leaks in TV history” and claiming it had been downloaded over a million times globally in the first 18 hours.
It came hours ahead of the premiere of the new season of the drama, which is reported to cost HBO US$100m per season to make, threatening a special offer from Foxtel giving consumers online access to the show for $30 per month on its Foxtel Play service hich it hoped would curb piracy of one of the most pirated programs in Australia.
Foxtel, why would I want to pay $120 to watch a 10 episode series? If Game of Thrones is the only reason I’m even considering getting Foxtel, why would I care what other shows I have forced on me?
I’m sure as hell not paying 3 times as much as the DVD!!! Especially as I can still remember paying iTunes $30 for the whole series back in 2013. And I got it within 24 hours of the show launching in the U.S. I’m still bitter that iTunes don’t have it any more because it was such a good deal (and an awesome deterrent from torrenting – I’ll wait 24 hours and now I’m forced to wait 10 weeks!)
Ahoy mateys!
Ye crappy Foxtel deals wont be able to stop the Flying Dutchman Of Torrenting!
Yaarrrrrrrr!
I don’t want to pirate anymore, I would love nothing more than a viable/affordable way to consume my shows legally. I have already deleted my bittorrent and subscribed to Stan and Netflix. $30 per month for Foxtel Go is a joke, three times that of the other streaming services, of course people are going to pirate at this price!
Are the exec’s at Foxtel thick or just in denial?
Just get a VPN and order HBO Go.
Screw the local suppliers. Foxtel doesn’t fund GOT. They just pay for a license to show it. Paying HBO directly means your money goes to the company that sets the show’s budget.
Live sport is the only reason you need Foxtel or similar Pay-TV service, i.e. where you basically need to watch live otherwise the enjoyment diminishes (particularly since it is so hard to not hear about sports scores).
GoT and other TV shows though, I don’t get why you have to watch it the second it comes out. I watched all of Breaking Bad in the 4 weeks before the Finale, and I never had any plot spoiled to me earlier.
Similarly, I’ve never watched an episode of GoT and basically have not much idea on the plot. Me watching the entire show in 3 years on DVD or downloaded on iTunes when it finishes is perfectly reasonable – and it will be MUCH cheapers.
Basically, it’s a lot easier to avoid plot spoilers in TV shows than it is to avoid sports scores – also at least in my circle TV shows are much less of a water cooler topic compared with sports.
Instant gratification culture though I guess….