Japan’s METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) announced the results of its survey on online piracy of Japanese content on January 26. According to the results, damages from piracy in 2025 rose to 5.7 trillion yen (about $36.9 billion USD), which is almost three times higher than the 2 trillion ($12.9 billion USD) in damages recorded in a past survey from 2022. However, as ITMedia News reports, from 2025, new categories like “character merchandise” were also included in the survey, and if we take them into account as well, the overall damages for this year total 10.4 trillion yen (about $67.4 billion USD).
The survey targeted consumers from Japan, China, Vietnam, France, America and Brazil, and an estimate cost of damage caused by online piracy of Japanese content was calculated based on their responses. The collected data was analyzed across five major categories – film (including anime and video content), publishing (books, manga, etc.), music, video games and character merch – with all categories seeing almost a triple rise in the amount of damages in the past 3 years; most notable ones being publications at 2.6 trillion yen and film at 2.3 trillion yen (excluding the aforementioned character merchandise piracy damages). Video games follow at 500 billion yen in damages, with 100 billion yen in damages for music piracy.
While the Japanese government says that the amount of pirated content consumed per person has decreased compared to past years, the total price of damages seems to have risen. This is due to factors such as fluctuations in prices and exchange rates, an overall rise in online users who consume pirated content, and the accelerating popularity of Japanese content overseas.
METI promises that it will continue its efforts to reduce the damage caused by online piracy of content. As some of the measures they have been working on implementing, they cite establishing new bases for cooperating with local authorities, strengthening litigation systems, strengthening frameworks against copyright infringement by generative AI and counterfeit merchandise, as well as establishing rights ownership databases that could help speed up litigation procedures.
However, the government also notes that as long as there is demand for Japanese content, pirated versions are bound to emerge regardless of how strong their anti-piracy measures are, which is why its main goal will be to “guide consumers of pirated content to legal means of usage.” Therefore, it promises to continue supporting the expansion of global streaming and distribution platforms which handle Japanese content.
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That’s usually what happens when localizers outright change the contents of the source material to push political views. People want the games as they were intended, not how a bunch of woke propagandist types think it ought to be.
Its almost as if this isnt the fault of subcription sites, localizers, and over all expensive prices
Majority of people relying on pirated content is mostly due to these 3 things too expensive, very woke and inaccurate translation, and predatpry subscription sites like netflix
Another is that its very tiring to be subscribes to so many latform to watch ebery anime since all of them are only available on each sites
One other reason in terms of merch is that scalpers buys almost all stock and resells it either double or triple the original price. So most people ends up relying on buying off brand merch
Streaming huh… I prefer to own my anime, thanks.
Plus, I’ve also heard that pirated content very often have superior quality than what is legally available outside Japan.
>90% of anime doesn’t get released outside of japan
>somehow this is because of “””woke”””
Piracy isn’t mainly increasing because of a desire to avoid political agendas, but because there’s a large amount of people who can no longer afford purchasing the amount of content they want to consume or don’t trust/want to use streaming sites. Also, a lot of piracy likely comes from children, a demographic that does not often have enough money to buy media.
Piracy will continue as long as they continue this never ending onslaught of poor business decisions, many of the best anime of all time are not available on any streaming platform anymore, DVD’s are no longer being mass produced anymore either, they allow companies like Amazon to do things like the horrible AI dubs.
If the anime industry wanted to counter piracy they’d focus on making it more accessible and convenient than piracy, much like Steam’s business model.
If only the western side got real translations instead of some of the slop of resent years, and as for anime, its very hard to watch them legally when you have yo pay 5 or so different subscriptions to watch them, Japan should have their own service available world wide that has everything, that would solve that issue instantly
D, wth are you even talking about
Finally a normal perception to piracy, japanese content is extremely popular but there is little to no distribution network to meet the demand, official subs appear weeks after fan subs, official manga can take years to be printed in western countries while digital options are so rare, they might as well not exist. Chinese networks seem to distribute their content using western tools like Youtube knowing that, but the culture in Japan in regards to product distribution is quite outdated, there is ignorance to ad related revenue, publishers ignore preexisting subscription based networks as they simply dont believe in it.
If it doesnt come out on Blu-ray, I pirate. It is that simple. So they can beef up streaming services, but if they fail to release a Blu-ray, Im not gonna stop.
what about that one paper mario game with vivian who is a originally a transgender woman in the japan release and then in the english release it was removed?
Glad to see that the Japanese government acknowledges that region-locking their stuff is why piracy in their country is a problem.
Hopefully that means Puyo Puyo~n and Puyo Puyo Fever 2 can get English dubs from SEGA now… maybe we can get another season of So I’m A Spider while at it, maybe?
I can tell about half these comments some u need to get woke out in your head
Kinda hard to get or even want access to legitimate content when Sony keeps buying everything and hiring activists to ruin translations.
is the woke in the room with us right now regard?
To those crying “woke”, how does it feel knowing that your entire ideology was created in order to normalize ritualistic pedophilia and cannibalism? You fell for one of the most obvious psyops ever, and it all it took was “minorities are why you’re a loser”. Good job, you are the biggest dipshits in modern history.
wdym “america”, so the entirety of THE ameriva, consisting of several countries? how about africa, europe and asia as well? plus you didn’t even specify the reason of why people pirate anime in the first place, which is that on-demand paid networks for watching anime has the worst quality of anime watching ever
Man these comments about localizers being woke are hilarious.
But real talk, It’s hard to find official and legitimate avenues to watch a lot of anime, especially if you like retro anime because a lot of it never got official translations. So if finding an unofficial source for a fansub is my only option, then what do these companies expect is going to happen?
They need to stop the translators from fucking up shows with their bs political crap, and translate what they are saying an nothing more. No one wants that. Why people have gone back to piracy and fan subs as they are far more accurate and devoid of stupid shit.
I miss Anime Lab. Crunchyroll bought it then is is no longer accessible. Crunchyroll pretty much bought all anime streaming services. Just Netflix and few others with limited of anime to watch. Crunchyroll is not great place to watch is broken free version. AD came up and then stuck in AD loop. And quality is down scale with sub. Anime Lab was so much better. It have bunch of anime movies and shows. 1080 p quality some dub and stable AD for the free version. Some like the ones just came out or some that just sits with subscription. Which I don’t mind. But that is gone. Thanks to Crunchyroll of the non competitive market by simply buy streaming services. That is why there is pirated sites because there is alternative to watch.
Oops minor grammar mistake. I meant. There is no alternative to watch.
I missed Anime Lab. That was best streaming service. 1080 p no broken AD and plenty free version to watch. Most free versions and sub but there is some dub. Subscription is for rest of Anime library and for just release and dubs. But that is gone because of this Crunchyroll buyout. Then that is where Pirated site comes in. Because Crunchyroll is a monopoly of official streaming service site for the West. I can’t buy DVD or Blue Ray because I tend to finely scratch the disk when trying put it in the player.
It’s not a fucking “loss”. Pirated copy=/=lost sale and it’s insane they’re still trying to push that bullshit propaganda in 2026. The vast majority of people who pirate something are not going to buy it if piracy isn’t an option.