Max password sharing crackdown will start by asking nicely

Warner Bros. Discovery, the owners of the Max streaming service that’s home to prestige TV from HBO, has revealed more about its plans to introduce a crackdown on password sharing.

In an earnings call this week, the company revealed plans to let those users watching via someone else’s account that they’ll soon be asked to sign up for their own subscriptions or get themselves added to a paying customer’s account for an extra member fee.

The word comes from the Chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels is promising to introduce some “soft messaging” among the user base during 2025 before it becomes the norm heading into the following year.

Wiedenfels says offending users will be informed that the practice of password sharing pushes the prices up for everyone so, if you wouldn’t mind, you’d be doing the entire community a massive favour.

The CFO said that password sharing is a form of price rises,” because Max is “asking members who have not signed up, or multi-household members to pay a little bit more.” (via The Verge).

The latest update comes following comments from key WBD executive JB Perrette, who called the password crackdown a “meaningful opportunity” back in March.

He added “obviously, Netflix has implemented [its password crackdown] extremely successfully. We’re gonna be doing that starting later this year and into ’25.”

Max has struggled to generate revenue for WBD and until now has been a loss-making property. The company’s CEO David Zaslav believes the company will “meaningfully exceed” it’s goal of $1 billion in profit for streaming alone next year.

Max’ strategy has caused its problems, not password sharing

When you ditch one of the most recognisable brands in entertainment in favour of a catch-all Max name. The prestige TV HBO became famous for has been scarcer in recent years, while the influx of reality TV brands has dumbed down the proposition entirely. Archive content has been cut back so WBD doesn’t have to pay residuals. It’d probably benefit from not spending hundreds of millions on crap DC comics movies that lose a ton of money too.