According to Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan is the latest to speak to its brighter side. “[It] led to a lot of people watching the series who otherwise would not have,” Gilligan tells the BBC.
While he’s happy that more people were introduced to the show, Gilligan also says:
 “The downside is a lot of folks who worked on the show would have made more money, myself included, if all those downloads had been legal,” he tells the BBC. The series’ finale alone was downloaded over half a million times within just 12 hours of airing. While AMC did sell the series online, it chose not to offer a free, ad-supported stream of it as many other networks do with their own shows, removing a potential avenue to gain viewers who don’t want to pay.