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Netflix Unveils First Details of New Anti-Password Sharing Measures

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
I haven't subscribed to Netflix in ages, but this seems like a stupid business decision.
 

Reallink

Member
How much money are they going to lose because of this? Because I feel like a lot of people aren't going to bother buying their own subscriptions.

None as they're dramatically lowering costs of operations (i.e no more 10's of millions of leechers streaming 4K HDR for free), and will gain 10x more new subs than they'll lose. Virtually no one is actually splitting the cost, in >90% of cases one person pays and just lets everyone else use it. That paying sugar daddy isn't going anywhere, but inevitably a shit ton of his leechers will wind up begudgingly paying for their own account. All the other streaming services will no doubt follow suite within the next year or two.
 
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Sonik

Member
The vast majority of Netflix content isn't even worth pirating anymore, they make the most forgettable cookie cutter shit and these morons think they can pull something like that? Good luck
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
None as they're dramatically lowering costs of operations (i.e no more 10's of millions of leechers streaming 4K HDR for free), and will gain 10x more new subs than they'll lose. Virtually no one is actually splitting the cost, in >90% of cases one person pays and just lets everyone else use it. That paying sugar daddy isn't going anywhere, but inevitably a shit ton of his leechers will wind up begudgingly paying for their own account. All the other streaming services will no doubt follow suite within the next year or two.
This is a pretty optimistic take. The paying sugar daddy in your example may very well leave the service since there are tons of new restrictions put on them now, especially if they travel often. This makes the service (for a lot of people) much less convenient than it used to be, and punishes users who did nothing wrong. The leechers in your scenario are much more likely to ditch the service rather than pay for it. If they even had a 10% retention rate on those accounts, I would be absolutely floored. I'm sure there was a lot of actual abuse, but again there are legitimate use cases where someone would need to do this (living part of the year in different locales, kids in college, etc.).

You're right that it should dramatically lower their operations costs though.
 

Superkewl

Member
This is a gaming forum. We don't pirate games here and I never pirate games. I also have a Netflix account!

But sometimes I just cant find the movie I want on netflix, or amazon or hulu etc etc etc.
You're preaching to the choir, I torrent all my movies/shows, but I recall things being way different in the past.
 

DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
You're preaching to the choir, I torrent all my movies/shows, but I recall things being way different in the past.


You may be misremembering. The rule has always been about piracy and promoting piracy about videogames. For movies and other media I would refer you to the Terms of Service



D. Emulation/Piracy

The topics of emulation and piracy in the context of the technical nature of emulators and ROM images, hardware modification technology, as well as their effect on the industry as a political topic are deemed to be generally acceptable.

Linking to pirate download sites, directions on how to get pirated software to work, reviews or impressions of pirated software, and livestreams of pirated software play are all strictly prohibited.
 

Billbofet

Member
I have my mom's account, yet this won't impact me. Cannot remember the last time anyone in my household fired up Netflix.
Good luck getting my mom to figure this temporary code bullshit out. She still doesn't even know how to attach a photo to a text.

Bad move from Netflix casting a light on how much people are really willing to pay/put the effort in for their mediocre content. I would even suspect this serves to remind people that don't use it to cancel their subs.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
kyle mooney trash GIF by Saturday Night Live
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Back to torrents I guess.
Gabe Newell understood this in 2011:

“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”

Netflix ultimately won out over piracy for a lot of people, because it was more convenient. Any obstacles or artificial barriers that Netflix puts between their paying customers and their content will inevitably lead more people to choose the easiest path. Lots of people said "oh it's just $8 a month, that's easier than pirating for me" - now it's like $20 a month, their selection is shit, and you have to prove to the Gestapo that you're credentialed.

Does Netflix really think that a bunch of broke college students that are using their parent's Netflix password will decide to pay them $10 a month (likely a more significant portion of their income than it would be for you or I hopefully) instead of just pirating what they want to watch? If you're traveling, which is going to be easier: jumping through Netflix's hoops to get their one-time activation code working, or jumping on a torrent website and pressing "go"?
 

gradient

Resident Cheap Arse
"Every time you share your password we'll make you watch another live action anime adaptation"

Fixed. Practical solutions

That would actually be an incredibly effective deterrent. Just imagine how many people would pay up rather than suffering the inconvenience of having to watch through the Death Note live action before being able to watch anything again.
 

Trogdor1123

Member
Since they charge for additional streams and have always let people share those extra streams, the government(s) should force them to drop every single account to a single stream offering. If people still want multi-streams they will log in and hit the option. Screw their TOS. They allowed a common practice to form with glee over the rise it gave them. If they want to change the reality deal, they should take the hit to make sure no one is paying for something taken away.
rick james cocaine GIF
 

K' Dash

Member
I kinda want to see them win and get more money from these actions just to see the meltdowns here.
 
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ZehDon

Member
And thus, the beginning of the end for Netflix. When they were able to grow in leaps and bounds, they were happy with password and account sharing. Now that the other streaming services have eaten into them, they're trying to wring as much money from each subscriber as possible. Won't be long now, I suspect.
 

Valedix

Gold Member
Netflix sure knows how to kill a service, as soon as stranger things is done there will be no need for it anymore.
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Honestly this sounds awful. Couldn't they have made it easier?

I dont share my Netflix at all but also we have devices that never log onto Netflix unless we are travelling like old tablets and stuff. Having to authenticate those with a special code sounds super lame.


EDIT - Ya our main device which uses Netflix (Shield Pro) is connected with an ethernet cable. So what is this WIFI stuff?
Plex
 

GloveSlap

Member
I can see this going either way for them. I've never seen both their original and party content in a worse state though, so this might be a bad time to do this.
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Alan Tudyk GIF by SYFY


ok I’ll see how this plays out. If it becomes too much. No more Netflix.
 
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Nobody_Important

“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
DOA.

They don't have the monopoly or the content catalogue to pull this off without losing customers.
 
I don’t know how they map the users to their location. Some ISPs around the world do not provide a single static ip.
Sounds like a terrible implementation.
 

nush

Gold Member
You know what would probably be an easy solution to reduce the current amount of shared accounts? Log everyone out and force a password change. All those shared>shared>shared - shared to sombody multiple times removed from the account owner would be nuked in a second. Thus only the people in contact with the account owner would be able to get the new password and not an ex girlfriend from years ago.
 

Denton

Member
Hah, the moment my profile on account owned by a friend stops working is the day I stop using Netflix.
 

Reallink

Member
This is a pretty optimistic take. The paying sugar daddy in your example may very well leave the service since there are tons of new restrictions put on them now, especially if they travel often. This makes the service (for a lot of people) much less convenient than it used to be, and punishes users who did nothing wrong. The leechers in your scenario are much more likely to ditch the service rather than pay for it. If they even had a 10% retention rate on those accounts, I would be absolutely floored. I'm sure there was a lot of actual abuse, but again there are legitimate use cases where someone would need to do this (living part of the year in different locales, kids in college, etc.).

You're right that it should dramatically lower their operations costs though.

Nah, the number of people who'll cancel over an IP check pop up is infinitesimal, 1 in100000. The number of free loaders they'll convert to paying subs is at least 30% and possibly >50%.

Hah, the moment my profile on account owned by a friend stops working is the day I stop using Netflix.

They'll hate to see you go, considering they're paying between 10-20 cents per GB of data for you to watch their stuff for free. The only scenario where this harms Netflix is accounts that actually split the cost between multiple households. Such cases likely only represent single digits percentage of users, and they'll only lose a small minority of those as most will opt to just pay for their own full membership. Olive Garden and Red Lobster parking lots are overflowing into the street for $23 microwaved frozen pasta and shrimp, I'm promise you nobody is so hard up they can't afford unlimited entertainment for $15's a month (though they like to pretend they are online, what with the impending Great Depression that's been starting tomorrow for the past 3 years now).
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Too lazy to read the thread. I dont use NF much anymore, but I still got my bro's NF credentials on my TV app. I just load up the app, type in his 4 digit password and I'm in. He made me my own icon/avatar along with his fam as he's got the big 4k family plan.

So am I safe? Or do I need to go through hoops at some point to ensure it's accessible? I barely even use it the past year. My TV has a hardwired ethernet cord into it. So not wi-fi.
 
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ahtlas7

Member
So I can only use my Netflix when I travel for 7 days before I have to fly home to sign in on the home wifi?
 

FeralEcho

Member
None as they're dramatically lowering costs of operations (i.e no more 10's of millions of leechers streaming 4K HDR for free), and will gain 10x more new subs than they'll lose. Virtually no one is actually splitting the cost, in >90% of cases one person pays and just lets everyone else use it. That paying sugar daddy isn't going anywhere, but inevitably a shit ton of his leechers will wind up begudgingly paying for their own account. All the other streaming services will no doubt follow suite within the next year or two.
Your theory only works If the paying sugar daddy is doing it all by himself while others just leech off of him.But in most examples I reckon friends just use 1 friend's acount to share but also split the payment between all 4 or 5.So instead of paying 6.99 or whatever they each pay 1.50 instead.Now take that away you really think the "sugar daddy" will hapilly start paying 6.99 on his own for the garbage Netflix produces? I think it's more likely he'll cancel and move to another subscription like Disney + that still allows for him to split the pay with his other 5 friends
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Your theory only works If the paying sugar daddy is doing it all by himself while others just leech off of him.But in most examples I reckon friends just use 1 friend's acount to share but also split the payment between all 4 or 5.So instead of paying 6.99 or whatever they each pay 1.50 instead.Now take that away you really think the "sugar daddy" will hapilly start paying 6.99 on his own for the garbage Netflix produces? I think it's more likely he'll cancel and move to another subscription like Disney + that still allows for him to split the pay with his other 5 friends
That is true. To what degree I don’t know but when I was using NF a lot years ago with my bros account I split the costs with him.

But now since I barely use it I told him to just downgrade his package and cut me off if he wants and he doesn’t even have a 4K tv. Years back I told him I’d split with him if he did the 4K big plan. I dont know if hes done that yet but if he hasn’t he likely will soon.
 
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Lasha

Member
Your theory only works If the paying sugar daddy is doing it all by himself while others just leech off of him.But in most examples I reckon friends just use 1 friend's acount to share but also split the payment between all 4 or 5.So instead of paying 6.99 or whatever they each pay 1.50 instead.Now take that away you really think the "sugar daddy" will hapilly start paying 6.99 on his own for the garbage Netflix produces? I think it's more likely he'll cancel and move to another subscription like Disney + that still allows for him to split the pay with his other 5 friends

Equally likely is that other groups like kids leeching off a parent or sibling will result in at least one new subscription. Netflix would be perfectly happy to have sub numbers remain net neutral while supporting fewer users who aren't paying. The cull reduces their operating costs while allowing it to focus on making media for people who subscribe.

The exercise also works as a kind of price discovery. Netflix can reduce the price and consolidate tiers to maximize subscribers now that it has the means to detect non subscribing households.
 

01011001

Banned
they will lose so many customers to piracy...

they know how absolutely easy it is to pirate Netflix shows and movies right?
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Sounds like this will be a fucking disaster for me. I live most of the year in French Polynesia, and the rest in London and Helsinki.
 
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