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HBO Max's Password-Sharing Crackdown Will Expand Globally in 2026 (thewrap.com) 21

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
HBO Max will be cracking down on password sharing around the world. From a report: The streamer first started cracking down on password sharing in the United States late last August. Subscribers are now able to add an additional out-of-household account for $7.99 a month. Before that August change, Warner Bros. Discovery had been testing for months to determine who may or may not be a "legitimate user," as CEO and President for Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming and Games JB Perrette described the plan.

On Thursday during the company's fourth quarter earnings call for 2025, WBD revealed that the streaming limitations would be expanding. This news came as part of an answer about which levers the company plans to pull to grow HBO Max. Password crackdowns have proven to be a lucrative way to both boost revenue and subscriptions. Netflix, for example, saw 9 million more subscribers after its first wave of password crackdowns in 2024. The caveat is that password crackdowns do not lead to consistent growth, and they often infuriate subscribers.
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HBO Max's Password-Sharing Crackdown Will Expand Globally in 2026 More

HBO Max's Password-Sharing Crackdown Will Expand Globally in 2026

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  • Do crackdowns work or not? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Echoez ( 562950 ) on Thursday February 26, 2026 @11:06AM (#66011344)

    The article is all over the place with its analysis: On the one hand, it writes "The caveat is that password crackdowns do not lead to consistent growth, and they often infuriate subscribers". Then immediately follows up with "There’s typically one big wave of new users who were previously sharing an account before the streamer plateaus to its new normal. Netflix, for example, saw 9 million more subscribers after its first wave of password crackdowns in 2024".

    9 million users might not be consistent on-going growth, but that represents 9 million new paying users. Do they stay users? If so, then 9M x $8 (or more) per month represents $72M per month, or $864M per year. Maybe that's a one-time bump in user counts, but that's a significant number.

    I imagine that HBO looked at the results of Netflix and Disney+ password crackdowns and is seeing that it was successful in raising subscribers and revenue. "Infuriating users" isn't an important metric if those users were never going to pay anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Himmy32 ( 650060 )

      Those sharing users that are infuriated into subscribing aren't the only ones getting a more frustrating service, but they need to weigh how many non-sharing users will drop the service after their hotel/AirBnB TV stops working halfway through their business trip.

      "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem". - Gabe Newell

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        but they need to weigh how many non-sharing users will drop the service after their hotel/AirBnB TV stops working halfway through their business trip.

        Streaming providers can tell the difference.

        First, many allow multi-streaming - so you pay for 4 streams from your "home", but outside your home, you get 1. So the home streams fine, and you get 1 remote stream which keeps everyone happy.

        Second, streaming providers pretty much know the IPs of all the hotels out there - just as they know the IPs of VPN services

  • It surprised me that Netflix did not suffer from their similar consumer-hostile actions, so now of course the next streamingservice tries to push the envelope further. And we ever closer to the cable tv insanity.
    You people still let this be done to you?

    • Subscriptions actually went up. Imagine the power of consumers if they actually protested with their wallets instead of just rolling over every single goddamn time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Himmy32 ( 650060 )
        That's a great thought and all, but remember that these companies are doing A/B testing and focus groups to scientifically determine what people will tolerate to the point of maximum value extraction. This tied with a lack of alternatives that don't have the same strategy.

      • Subscriptions actually went up. Imagine the power of consumers if they actually protested with their wallets instead of just rolling over every single goddamn time.

        Imagine being surprised that people who would have purchased a service if they couldn't get it for free purchased it when they could no longer get it for free.

  • If you make heavy use of it they detect that and realize that you're unlikely to cancel and so they hit you with the password sharing prompt and shut you down.

    I have HBO Max and share it with my kid who no longer lives with me (imagine that, an adult grown child that can afford to live on their own!) and they let it slide but the kid works something like 50 or 60 hours a week so they don't watch a lot of TV and while I have a normal hours job I don't watch a lot of HBO, mostly just John Oliver and mostl

  • I share my password with my retiree mother. We're on opposite sides of a major city with no effort made to hide our geographic separation. I have never heard one peep from Netflix about it. This leads me to suspect that they aren't really concerned with minor sharing, and perhaps 3 or more might be needed for it to bubble up to their concern. It would also reduce the possibility of anger due to false positives.

    This is a problem as old as cable TV. I can't really say I blame them.

    • With IPv6, if you're in the same geographic area on the same ISP it's really hard to know if you're in the same household or not.

      That said, I'm surprised there's no market for travel routers that VPN back to home whether for personal travel or for college students. Devices certainly exist if you know what VPN is, but there's nothing marketed for the purpose that's idiot-proof. Though you might need symmetric speeds at home to handle the upload.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stripes ( 3681 )
        That said, I'm surprised there's no market for travel routers that VPN back to home whether for personal travel or for college students.

        I’m not. It is a hard value proposition to describe, and not an easy product to set up (I mean as a software product, “make sure the server is on a device you never power off and stays at home...” -- if you make a hardware product it won;t be too hard, one device you leave at home and another you take with you...), if you make it a hardware product it is

        • The hardware can be much cheaper than a pi. For marketing reasons you wouldn't call it VPN because that makes a picture of routing elsewhere or false privacy. It would be a home bridge (name taken though). It would probably depend on online services that may go away without warning and the two devices would ship pre-paired and the online service would do NAT hole punching. If you have Ethernet on both ends it can be plug and go, but if you have to be a Wi-Fi client you probably want Bluetooth setup with

  • Why not crack down on shareholder greed? They're almost literally drinking the blood of the working class

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