ladyhobo-blog

[ladyhobo-blog]

Has Dramafever been permanently shut down or something? Im confused

It’s True: DramaFever has permanently shut down. 

From DramaFever.com:

Many of you guys noticed a week or two ago, when the DramaFever app stopped working correctly; it was skipping random subtitles and not allowing downloads offline. Tech support was useless and telling people to download the beta OS for their iPhones to maybe fix it (you want me to download a beta operating system for my entire phone so that your one app will work properly?…) 

It should have been a big red flag that things weren’t going well, and most of us noticed this letter on the df site yesterday (I didn’t see it until today because I was on a 13 hr plane ride.)

Did large corporations kill DramaFever? Probably.

Don’t large corporations kill everything? Sorry, that’s my super cynical viewpoint but I stand behind it because it’s a literal fact. 

“Today, Warner Bros. Digital Networks will be closing its DramaFever OTT service due to business reasons (edit: obviously money) and in light of the rapidly changing marketplace for K-drama content, a staple of the service’s programming,” -Source

How DramaFever died according to the facts:

Drama Fever, a small 20+ employee company was founded in 2009 and backed by investers before it was sold to Softbank.

Softbank sold the site to Warner Bros in 2016.

For a while everything was fine I guess? (totally factual)

Within the last year or two, larger corporations like Netflix, hulu and amazon began putting in bids for international dramas, raising the cost of licensing from the 10′s of thousands to up to a million dollars per show (Mr. Sunshine for example).

This prevented smaller companies from being able to compete for licensing, thus having to give up shows, or sell content to larger sites making their brand less profitable (this happens in ALL of capitalism btw). For instance: Viki releases some subs through netflix. DramaFever released some shows through Amazon, but if people go there for the shows, they won’t go to the source.

Warner Bros was purchased by AT&T in mid 2018 to supposedly make the best streaming service EVER (as if they could do anything that cool) and this is where I take a little artistic license:

AT&T (probably) took a look at the little 22 person company of DramaFever and was like “What’s this tiny stupid thing? We can’t make enough on it: Press Delete.”

DramaFever dies a sad death leaving us to scramble and find our niche content somewhere else. Send help.

[ladyhobo-blog]

Goodbye dramafever

I am so heartbroken over the shutdown of dramafever; endless korean and Chinese dramas that entertained me for the past few years have now. Please come back soon