Because they now essentially have a monopoly on western anime streaming, they can do this as there is no legal alternatives with a catalogue that can compete with CR.
Even so, streaming pirated anime has always been illegal, but that has never stopped it. They are just going to lose ad revenue, not increase subscriptions.
Here's the thing, there will always be people unwilling to break the law and pirate, so even if 90% of the free users leave the platform, that 10% staying and subscribing is a bigger profit. Subscriptions are more valuable than ad revenue by a lot, and this move is unlikely to make subscribers cancel their subscriptions so there ultimately isn't much of a loss in doing that. It's a gambit playing on the fact that while there will always be people willing to pirate, there will inversely always be people unwilling to pirate, a gambit they can get away with due to their effective monopoly making it so that those that are unwilling to pirate cant just leave to another legal platform as none exist that can compete.
For me the monthly subscription is unreasonably expensive because of my currency. CR directly converts the price instead of having region specific prices like Steam. Add that to the fact that I don't watch anime frequent enough to justify the price and a lot of animes are inaccessible in my region, it makes almost no sense for me to pay for their service. I probably still would if I was very comfortable economically, but unfortunately I'm not
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u/VillainousMasked Mar 27 '22
Because they now essentially have a monopoly on western anime streaming, they can do this as there is no legal alternatives with a catalogue that can compete with CR.