'The Last of Us' Was the Most-Pirated Show of 2023
'The Last of Us' Was the Most-Pirated Show of 2023
Sci-fi streaming shows dominated the list of the most-pirated shows this year, with Pedro Pascal headlining a one-two hit between Last of Us and Mandalorian.
Speaking as a Brit, the only way to get TLoU was to subscribe to Sky TV, which (as far as I’m aware) requires a 12 month contract. Fuck that, quite frankly.
So I took to the high seas because I could.
218There's also Now TV, or NOW as it's called...err... now.
42Now tv doesn't require a contract like that, in fact we just used a trial which they're very generous on giving out to people multiple times. So when a site like that comes out we use a trial if there's one available and then depending on the runtime we might only have to pay a month and it's pretty cheap if you just get TV shows and not movies.
4Now TV is fucking awful though. They still think 1080p and surround sound are luxury optional extras.
It's basically just cybersquatting on shows so nobody else can have them, and remind you that you could watch them in decent quality if only you weren't such a cheapskate and would subscribe to full Sky.
9
That's what happens when it takes 8 separate subscriptions to keep up with TV
119I went on a smash and grab of all the shows I'd been meaning to watch, but hadn't been on any of the services I'd subbed to for the last few years.
Turns out they were all HBO shows.
9
... How would you even measure that?
/edit: ah, popular downloads from one particular torrent provider. Not the wider picture.
Add on pirate streams, usenet, and the other half a billion torrent sites and those numbers muddy a bit...
88I don't think it said just 1 specific torrent provider. But even then, as long as it was a decently sized generic torrent provider, what makes you think it would not be representative of the bigger picture?
22They explicitly state these are Torrent Freaks numbers. Along with:
It should be noted, as Torrent Freak does, these statistics only reflect a portion of any pirated content this year. The stats are specifically for single-episode torrents, rather than season-wide packages, and even more specifically they’re based on data from the torrenting platform BitTorrent. Just as television has grown and evolved across new formats in the last decade or so, so has piracy, with more and more people turning to sites hosting streams of pirated content, rather than “traditionally” pirating content through downloaded, local copies.
These numbers only reflect piracy of one type and among that type only one, very public, provider. (and not even their entire community, just those that download episodes one by one) That's quite a limited scope. Lots of pirates don't like such public services and/or use other protocols/methods of acquiring media.
Personally, I don't even use Torrents at all anymore, let alone Torrent Freak, yet I pirate hundreds of hours of media every month. I've also been hearing far more commonly in the last few years about people using pirate streaming services instead of downloads.
If you want the full picture, you've gotta expand your demographics. When you only ask the straight white men, all you get is what straight white men think, instead of the whole community's opinion.
21
law of large numbers: it's probably fairly representative
3
Piracy will increase as streaming services get more exclusive and more expensive. Fuck em, we sail the seas again.
86Just re-downloaded plex after a 5 year break after I got the email about prime going up. Back to the seas for me!
17I just searched and found my old usenet account again after 7 or so years. Still 1TB of data left! Still amazing content and speeds!
9We still have a bunch of pirated stuff from years ago, but then we were satisfied with Netflix and didn't bother using it. Now we're using it more because stuff we want just isn't available, and I have several terabytes of space left on it NAS. All I need now is to get less lazy and start filling up again.
2
Yeah bruh, I can’t be bothered with subscriptions & shit.
41But it's this specific show, so I wonder if people were interested enough to check it out but not enough to pay to do so, which would track for TLOU and especially for a video game adaptation.
7
Well, not like you can own anything anymore.
41I don’t get it, the title actually says what the point is… wtf is going on here. Shouldn’t it say “#1 pirated show of 2023 revealed!!!!” or “NETFLIX BEATS OUT DISNEY WITH SURPRISE PIRACY RANKING!!”
It’s almost 2024, I didn’t think meaningful titles were allowed anymore.
33I will give it my clicks, as a reward.
8
I can't be bothered to figure out which streaming service it's on. Also my *arr stack is fully automated and shared with ~15 people so the cost per person is very low considering my nas and nuc use ~100W combined, that's $12/mo for 15 people based on my local electric rate. I would gladly put my plex/jellyfin server in the closet and pay for a subscription if I could pay $12/mo to legally watch any show / movie on however many screens I want from wherever I want. But until then, my arrstack is both cheaper for the features and more convenient in content availability.
As a comparison, to subscribe to every major streaming service would be upwards of $90 per month.
32As someone who is into tech but doesn’t understand what you’re saying here, is there a glossary, or wiki that I could read up on your setup? Looking to swap to the high seas this year but wanna do it in a way that’s smart and convenient.
9I'm not sure if the piracy megathread or FMHY megathread cover the *arr stack specifically, but they have lots of information so I'm recommending them broadly for anyone wanting to ingest information about piracy.
Regarding what the arr stack even is:
Tldr, you set up a list of public and/or private trackers in Prowlarr or Jackett. In Radarr and Sonnar you set up movies and shows respectively that you want to keep track of. Rad/Sonarr check those trackers for releases for your tracked media matching criteria (like resolution, size, language, etc).
When it finds a matching release, it sends the torrent file or magnet link to your torrent client to download. When it finishes, Rad/Sonarr hardlink or copy the file to a library location and organize/name them according to rules you set.
You can point Jellyfin or Plex to that library location and all the media will be organized so it can easily figure out what media is there and grab metadata for it (cover images, description, ratings, etc). Then you can watch that media through Jellyfin/Plex or an app that plugs into them.
The *arrs also work with usenet if you'd prefer that over or in addition to torrenting with a vpn.
12The servarr wiki and the trash guides have a lot of info on what the various pieces do and how to set them up. I didn't strictly follow them but I've browsed them to get ideas on stuff like custom formats and such to get sonarr/radarr to automatically download and upgrade towards the codecs/quality that I prefer.
Personally I run Plex+jellyfin side by side to start, then sonarr/radarr/lidarr to download and organize TV/movies/music, with prowlarr to auto setup torrent sites into sonarr/radarr/lidarr, with a transmission+VPN docker container connected to each of the same 3, and finally an overseerr web ui that my friends can log into to submit requests to be auto downloaded by sonarr/radarr.
It's a lot to set up at once, but I started out with just Plex like 10 years ago and I've slowly added each container as time went on so it's only like a couple weekends a year where I tinker with it or do a migration to a new box as I moved from place to place and had different spaces available for my gear. Start with just a Plex and/or jellyfin server, you can tinker with sonarr/radarr without using it to auto download at the start. It's still super useful for renaming / organizing files, and you can only add certain folders if you don't want it to mess with a collection that you prefer to manually manage. Or create a new junk library folder to let it run amok with until you have it configured to your liking. Add in a torrent+VPN/Usenet downloader container to get it auto downloading when you're ready, and when you get tired of accepting requests personally from friends, an overseerr (for Plex) or jellyseerr (for jellyfin) container they can log into with using their existing Plex/jellyfin login to have their requests automatically forwarded to the appropriate *arr app and you'll have a fully automated low or no touch piracy setup. One of these days I'll also get bazarr up and running to make it easier to grab subtitles too since every once in a while I download something obscure and the only torrents for it dont have subs so I manually grab them from opensubtitles or something. It feels pretty magical though when you've requested a series and throughout the week, you see new episodes just pop up on the recently aired/added row in Plex/jellyfin within an hour or two of the episodes airing.
5Their quick start quides are pretty good.
I'd start with Radarr (Movie manager), add on Prowlarr (indexer manager), then expand from there. Once you've learned Radarr, the others are very similar.
After that, look into a reverse proxy along with a domain name: Nginx or Apache are the two I hear about most. I use nginx myself. This will let you access services using easily readable names (sonarr.example.com) instead of having to remember the ip+port combinations of each service (192.168.0.200:8096) as well as add https if you're going to be exposing things like emby/jellyfin/plex publicly.
A domain can be purchased/rented from a public registrar to point at your public IP, but you can also use them entirely within your own LAN for free if you setup a local DNS server. I just use pihole for this: easy to setup+use, while providing DNS based adblocking for the whole network.
I don't mind answering questions or providing clarification where I can. :)
3
My stack runs on pi4, much less than 12$
2That's also a great option if you don't need transcoding or tone mapping and can restrict your collection to specific codecs to ensure client compatibility. For my setup quicksync essentially is a requirement since I want to download certain items in the best quality and have remuxes in 4K HDR 7.1 for my own home theater while being able to transcode those items to multiple friends simultaneously and on the fly without needing to keep a separate 1080p copy.
So far I've seen around 7 simultaneous transcodes on my NUC yet the CPU usage stays below 10% because the quicksync is handling all the transcoding while sipping power (another big benefit to using QS over CPU or GPU transcoding).
4
Same. Even when I have a sub for something I want to watch (like Prime), it's just easier to let *arr sort it out and tell me when a new episode is ready.
1
I'd put money on Australia being the top country to pirate it, no one wants to give Foxtel money to watch a HBO show.
27Because it was also the best show of 2023?
22Also DVD release was held back from the initial advertised date (or at least if it wasn't, nobody had it for at least a month from then). Plenty of the supposedly legit sets online - including on Amazon etc - were also clever counterfeits (I ended up with one)
10Did you know there were also more car accidents in 2023 than there were in 1823?
9
21The most popular show is also the one most pirated...
Amazing stuff
8I didn’t pirate the show at first, because I could watch it legit on the streaming service I use. But that service consistently shit the bed each Sunday when the show aired.
8REALLY tried to like it. Watched the whole thing but then afterwards, I felt like I had watched nothing. The farther away I get from the show, the more I dislike it. All of the acting was great. And when they got away from the video game, the story was wonderful. But I felt like I was watching a video game - which I was in a way. And I felt like it was trying way to hard to be profound. It's sad because I thought that "Chernobyl" was one of the best things I've ever watched on television.
Edit: Completely realize that this post was not about TLoU but just needed to get this off my chest. When everyone raves about it, I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. On the subject of the post, yes, streaming services are getting way too expensive and I think we'll reach an inflection point soon where they will all start collapsing at once.
6It's a very plot-driven story with very little deviation from the main mission. I loved the show but I agree that the plot is especially linear (much like a video game) and without the in-between bits where you'd be playing the game in the original story the pacing can feel rushed.
I think the show could have benefited from more time with Joel and Ellie to develop their relationship but I don't know how they could have done that without bloating the story with filler that wasn't original to the game, which would not have gone over well.
3It was very average. Nothing much happened, the zombies were 0 threat, Joel was a pussy compared to the game. Ellie was just a potty mouth. The gay episode was great in isolation, but a pointless waste of an hour in the grand scheme as it added 0 to the story.
5 or 6 out of 10.
2
I think I may have actually pirated this one at some point. Never intended to watch it, just a grab and seed sort of deal
5Because Now TV is a piece of shit.
4Yup, I haven't watched a TV series in ages other than those "gameshows" like "Is it Cake" or whatever, and we're mostly there to guess who'll win.
My kids watch lots of shows, but I would honestly be fine cancelling my subscriptions and just playing video games if it wasn't for them.
1it’s a quantity/quality problem. you really need to need to rely on word of mouth because there’s just so much to sort through and a lot of it is bad or could have been better. Sure , you get your hits like squid games that it’s hard to not know about it , but something like Severance on Apple TV + , I probably wouldn’t have watched it on my own despite having the service.
1
You’re welcome
3This is the best summary I could come up with:
Torrent Freak’s annual look at piracy in 2023 saw the top 10 shows once again dominated by familiar faces from the world of streaming sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero material.
It’s a running trend for the last few years since the age of Game of Thrones’ climax—which dominated torrent sites for pretty much the entirety of its run, a legacy continued now by House of the Dragon, which took the crown in 2022—gave way to pirated streaming content.
It should be noted, as Torrent Freak does, these statistics only reflect a portion of any pirated content this year.
But even with that in mind, it’s not surprising that for the most part the biggest shows in demand are the ones that require premiums to access across multiple streaming platforms—even The Last of Us fits this, as both a hybrid show broadcast on premium cable and simulcast on (HBO) Max.
As the streaming age continues to descend into a portfolio of walled gardens, rather than its initial promise of offering access to content from a variety of studios in a singular place, it remains unsurprising that people will see piracy as an alternative to paying for another subscription-based service on top of what they already do to try out a show.
It’s not like the streamer didn’t have any big shows this year, either—it’s more likely that a lot more people have a Netflix subscription than they do an Apple TV+ or Disney+ subscription... and given the general trend across many streaming platforms this year has been increasing prices on cut or stagnated content, and, well, can you blame people for not wanting to buy in on top of what they already have?
The original article contains 485 words, the summary contains 281 words. Saved 42%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
3Before they changed to HBO max, it was the only streaming service worth paying for. Once they started removing their own god damn shows, it was back to the bay.
2The show was mid. Nothing about it was bad, in fact there were some genuinely quality stand out moments, the Frank and Bill episode was unexpected but really moving, but everything involving the zombies and Joel and Ellie seemed like a retread. Because it was. It was almost a 1:1 retelling of the game with added scenes that IMO felt haphazardly sewn into the main narrative. The game is more engaging and the show felt rushed due to, ironically, being shorter than the average person's playtime of Part 1.
2The best stuff in the show (side from episode 3) was lifted directly from the game. But I don't really blame the showrunners for that. The game had spectacular dramatic moments, and some things don't really need to be fixed.
Moments like Ellie and Joel in the truck, Ellie convincing Joel not to leave her with Tommy, and Joel arriving as Ellie saved herself from David were perfect moments, and I respect the showrunners for realizing that.
There was some stuff they changed that I understand, even if I didn't love it. Giving Henry and Sam more of a backstory made some sense from a working perspective since so much of the bonding with those characters in the game came through gameplay moments and not the cutscenes. It didn't work great, but I understand why they tried it.
Overall it's far and away the best adaptation of a game I've ever seen.
And episode 3 is an absolute masterpiece. My parents who have always been pretty homophobic were choking up by the end of the episode.
2
Didn't watch it since I already hate Joel's guts from the first game, but I can't wait for part 2 so
spoiler
we can have all that discourse all over again after the golf episode.
2- 1
@return2ozma @technology Hated that show
1- 1
I didn't even understand how to watch it in Germany (eventually figured it out, but the high seas were easier to sail).
I did buy the UHD Blu-ray set of this season though, because I enjoyed it quite a bit.
1and it sucked
-10It's one of the few shows that peaked my interest as I love zombies and post apocalyptic worlds but I only got thru like 4 or 5 episodes until I stopped watching as it was utter garbage as are most things that's on TV nowdays. That's why I don't feel like paying for it either. I don't seem to be in the target audience for most things.
-14Weren't people blaming the child not being sexy enough or something hilarious? I don't know I haven't even played the game. Maybe that was a 4chan thing.
0My issue with it is that good story telling is replaced with constant pointless action scenes to keep the tiktok generation entertained.
1
I don't see the draw. Do people like Pedro Pascal because they feel bad for his GoT character? I don't have anything against him as a person or an actor but he seems like your average TV grade actor. Someone you would have seen ages ago in a show like LOST and forgot about. Good for him but I don't get why people online act like he's the best thing to happen to television
-33I think they like him cause he is a good actor, and usually people like watching good actors in good shows
46I mean he was in GoT.
He's the antagonist on Wonder Woman 1984.
He's the protagonist (or at least his face) on the Mandalorian.
He's co-protagonist in TLoU... and so on.
You might not like his acting, but he's definitely one of the most recognizable Hollywood actors in the last 5 years.
Ah, y también es Chileno. 🇨🇱
Viva Chile Conchetumare!!! 🇨🇱🌶️
40Just to highlight WW84, he was really good in what was otherwise a terrible movie. He also had a killer episode of SNL and was able to save a single sketch on the abomination that was the Bad Bunny hosted SNL episode. He was a delight on the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
11I liked him in Narcos
4
There's also other cast on the show that are all really great actors...
18There’s nothing wrong with his acting, he’s consistently good in things.
17One of the few actors to actually have differentiation between his characters.
Who he is on The Bubble vs. WW84 vs. TLoU vs. The Mandalorian are all very different, much moreso than many of the "repeat cast" actors.
4Yeah, he's a good actor. But TLOU is not that great, and more spot on, Joel's not among his best works.
3I don’t see the point. Did you need to comment on Pedro Pascal because you feel bad that nobody likes talking to you? I don’t have anything against you as a person or as a commenter but this seems like your average Reddit-grade JAQing off. Something you would downvote and move on but I don’t get why you’re acting like people liking Pedro Pascal is a personal affront to you.
2I'm with you, I'm not a fan of tlou, or him, but he was pretty funny in that nick cage movie, the immense weight of incredible talent it whatever it was called.
1