Probably Viki is benefiting.
That is worth investing on Viki when the salaries cost is cut down thanks to volunteers and people become more interested with the Asian wave.
I don’t know if that would be possible, because it is difficult to reverse the price down of a service anywhere. Once it is up, it normally stays at this level or rises normally (inflation too, salaries too in any country).
A company’s goal by essence is to make profits.
So when you touch to any partner’s profit, it is delicate.
I don’t say the price is correct or not correct.
I just say that Viki is like any capitalist company.
By essence, we can’t ask a company not to make profit, it goes against its nature or the reason of the existence of the company.
Especially when the companies are in a niche, the price is more flexible.
I don’t know if it’s fair to say Viki takes advantage of us. Just like @piranna pointed out, all companies need to make profit and they wouldn’t even exist without it. I can’t look on Viki’s bank account and I’m not fully aware of all the costs and obstacles they face.
What I do know, is that, unlike other services, Viki has an option for watching not just without paying, but even without an account. Limited, sure, but you still get a whole lot more than what Netflix, Disney, etc. would give to a non-paying and even unregistered customer.
And then there’s the option of volunteering instead of paying. The other companies don’t have that option either. Viki does.
Apart from that, Viki may not yet be as famous as the other companies and therefore have possibly not as much money to spend as their big cousins …
But Viki parent company is rather large and ever growing Plus as pointed out many times before and this website is mostly subtitled by volunteers there by allowing the company to ignore and labour cost for that time and effort
I hope this topic doesn’t go in the the direction where random people say “volunteers need to be paid”. We had that discussion way to many times so please refrain from that. Let’s be honest, if you want Viki to lower the prices you don’t want Viki to pay us. If you really wanted Viki to pay us you would be willing to pay a lot more then you already do.
But saying that the company is struggling or would struggle without volunteers is like saying Crunchyroll support the Japanese anime industry when in fact it really does not The reality of the parent company is one of the strongest most well position company in Japan/ Asia
Well the Viki model with volunteers existed right from the start, not just when Rakuten bought it.
Costs nothing? I think they will have an advantage giving the Pass, since in the books it should be an active post, so it can reduce taxes. I don’t know how it works for Viki though, with being in the US and Singapore …
Please don’t go to the topic of - volunteers need to be paid - I am exhausted of that, if you wanted to do that, then you would need to pay every volunteer not only here, those in the neighborhoods, those in sport club activities, … Why not got for an international unconditional basic income … Okay I will stop too, right there.
@piranna Viki cannot pay us, they would go bankrupt if they do and how would they divide it anyway. How much would the seggers get, the English subbers? The editors? The Channel Manager? The moderators? Other language subbers? You cannot pay the Spanish ones and give the Dutch ones no pay.
I would more than happily become a volunteer myself unfortunately I am not speak more than one language I know basic Japanese but only enough understand a little bit of Japanese music and not enough to provide any sensible or honest translation for spoken dramA this topic however is about honest and equal pricing because let’s be honest international users don’t have access to Viki plus and even though I do the currency conversion from US dollars to Canadian dollars if you choose a yearly model is insane and Viki is just one service
There is where it goes wrong. My Korean is absolute beginner level, I don’t sub in my native language but I mainly work on Kdrama. Without knowing a lot of Korean…
Knowing only one language is NOT an excuse to not volunteer.
I have never asked to be paid and I am still not lol
For me, it is a hobby.
Finland, Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland are in the top of the world for social costs, our economic and social models are not the same at all with the US or Singapore.
Plus, how would they check for the quality.
We don’t pay a translator to do translation programs. The obligations would be different for a channel manager, mods and seggers. We’d have to show results. Imagine we can’t, lay off!
