It is faster because they are losing subscribers, and because their remaining subscribers are having more difficulty connecting to peers due to lack of PF. I switched to Air VPN and was actually surprised how fast it was compared to Mullvad. (the Canadian servers at least, haven’t tried many of the other servers).
Air VPN as it supports port forwarding. PF isn’t as important if you only download popular new content, as there are usually enough connectable seeders on popular torrents. But PF is absolutely crucial if you want to be able to obtain old or rare content or if you use private trackers.
I’m honestly baffled that so many are still recommending Mullvad after they made such a stunning reversal of their friendly policy towards p2p by removing port forwarding. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I can throw them.
Seems this has become standard operating procedure for much of this industry - make shitty movies, wonder why they flop at the box office, then go scorched earth against alleged “pirates” and blame them for your “losses”. When the studios make movies that are worth seeing, people will go to see them. See: Top Gun Maverick and Avatar 2, among other recent multi-billion dollar hits.
It is worth noting that many of the more egregious abuses of the legal process as of late seem to be by this one company Millennium Media and their many subsidiaries (Bodyguard Productions, HB Productions, etc.) They are basically just a bigger version of Strike 3, just professional trolls who would rather profit off of legal shakedowns than make good movies.