Max, another major platform whose bizarre name change ruined years of brand recognition, is also getting serious about password sharing, The Verge reports. Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery said on its third-quarter earnings call that it would begin cracking down on the practice over the coming months, with a “very soft message” to encourage people to pony up.
Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said the soft message mentioned above will be reinforced in 2025, suggesting that the obligation will eventually be imposed. He suggested that anyone who shares passwords would be raising subscription prices for everyone, which would be like “asking non-registered members and multi-household members to pay a little more.”
The company also announced nearly $10 billion in revenue last quarter and 7.2 million new Max subscribers. This is the largest subscriber increase in the platform’s history. However, there’s a good chance that some of those 7.2 million people have given their passwords to their grandchildren or something, so there’s still a lot of juice to be squeezed from the lemon.
Wiedenfels also did not rule out further price increases. He said Max’s “premium nature” gives the platform “plenty of room to continue to push prices up, which we have wisely considered.” When it comes to sensible things, subscription prices skyrocketed in June of this year and again in 2023. So the price increase is now like an annual installment of Madden?
Max is just the latest streamer to take issue with password sharing. Netflix makes people pay to share passwords, and Disney+ just started cracking down in September.
