[jcranmer]

My recollection is that, by the early days of Crunchyroll, fansubs weren't really competing on quality so much as speed. And with the legitimate licensors having access to the scripts slightly in advance of the Japanese release, the fansubs could never catch up to them in release speed.

[extraduder_ire]

In the very early days they were a piracy site that hosted fansubs.