What to Know About Max Password Crackdown Coming Next Year
By Movieguide® Contributor
Warner Bros Discovery’s streaming platform Max revealed it will begin to limit shared accounts by gradually cracking down on password sharing throughout 2025.
“This is an art and a science to try and tighten the filter of who’s in there. We’ll start some early messaging with some people who we think are in the higher tier of usage. We will offer a way to essentially add a member, starting in the first quarter,” said JB Perrette, CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games. “We will then start gradually as we get the data and start figuring out, with some explicit and implicit signals, how good we are at detecting. And then as we go through ’25, you’re going to see the filters get tighter and tighter.”
Max’s approach to its password crackdown appears to resemble that of Disney+’s, which began with emails to subscribers prompting them to begin paying for users from different households.
READ MORE: WHAT TO KNOW DISNEY PASSWORD SHARING CRACKDOWN
While password sharing had been a longstanding norm in the streaming industry, Netflix changed its tolerance to the practice in 2023 when it made a shift in its strategy from focusing on subscriber growth to profits. At the same time, it added ad-supported tiers, offering users a cheaper way to access the platform. Most major streaming services have now followed suit on both fronts, as they also focus on profits.
While this change is expected to benefit Max, Perrette admitted it is unlikely to lead to significant subscriber growth in the same way Netflix added tens of millions of subscribers after cracking down.
“I’m conscious of not over-selling [the password crackdown] because you see Netflix’s success. But Netflix was in market for 17 years. That means people are sharing passwords for 17 years,” Perrette said.
“We’ve been in the market for four, if you count the HBO Max launch. And obviously, we’re not quite at the same scale, but relative to the scale of our business, it’s a meaningful opportunity,” he added.
READ MORE: MAX TO CRACK DOWN ON PASSWORD SHARING
- Content: +1Share:
- Content: +2