Yuki The Snowman

Crunchyroll has been under fire for decreasing the streaming quality of premium level users to save on cost. While this may seem terrible from a customer’s point-of-view, you must remember that Crunchyroll is a business.  Businesses may have to cut down on costs to save their money and investments.   Customers may have to suffer these costs as well but business first, customers second.

I mean, dont get me wrong. It  does suck that premium users have to deal with the loss of quality.  However, you must think about a few factors for these money-saving cuts.

Piracy is a major issue in the anime industry.  Piracy can cost the industry upwards to billions of dollars (I do not have an exact estimate right now) a year.  That’s a huge blow to all companies within the anime industry.  Anime companies suffer from piracy and are forced to cut back on funds.

Next, everyone involved in the  anime industry wants a share of the money.  Investors.  Distributors.  Publishers. Workers.  Everybody  needs their cut.  Crunchyroll gotta respect that and take care of their business partners first.  Then they gotta take care of the fans.  If you don’t take care of your workers and business partners, they ain’t gonna take care of the customers.  That’s gonna look bad on you as a business leader.

(Trust me; I have worked in the restaurant industry for eight years.)

Finally, perhaps the issues with low quality streaming is with you.   Yep.  You.

I have a friend who has a premium membership with Crunchyroll and despite the “dip” in quality streaming, he told me he still has high quality streaming.  Why? Well, he has 45” HDTV with fiber internet.  Your internet connection does have an impact on video streaming quality you know.   Streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, and Crunchyroll change their encoding to match your internet speed.

If you’re using Wi-Fi to stream, you’re going to get garbage quality.  If you are using fiber internet, you’re getting the best quality.  In addition, you are paying $7 worth of quality with Crunchyroll so there is that factor as well.

Lets put it in more…not so legal terms:

You put in $5 for a reggie blunt, you’re going to get low quality.  Put in $20 for a kush blunt, you’re going to get higher quality.

…not that I know anything about that,  I swear!

Crunchyroll is a business.  Businesses gotta make sure they have enough money to stay afloat and  provide as well.  Businesses must make sacrifices and those sacrifices might even have an impact on customers.   It sucks but that’s how businesses are.

FURTHER READING:

Crunchyroll’s reduced video quality is deliberate cost-cutting at the expense of paying customers