Expect it to be a pain in the ass.
Currently, you can share your Netflix password with anyone. But that’s not quite how it’s going to be in the near future. They realized that they can’t exactly make people stop doing it, per se; so instead they’ll have you pay for the privilege. In a blogpost, Netflix’s director of product innovation Chengyi Long, said:
We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans. While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households – impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.
So for the last year we’ve been working on ways to enable members who share outside their household to do so easily and securely, while also paying a bit more. And over the next few weeks, we’ll launch and test two new features for our members in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru.
Chengyi Long
To wit, users in those countries will have the option to add extra out-of-home members to their account for a nominal charge; costing a fraction of what a full subscription would cost. in addition, they will also include the ability to transfer a profile to a new account. As the post puts it:
- Add an Extra Member: Members on our Standard and Premium plans will be able to add sub accounts for up to two people they don’t live with – each with their own profile, personalized recommendations, login and password – at a lower price: 2,380 CLP in Chile, 2.99 USD in Costa Rica, and 7.9 PEN in Peru;
- Transfer Profile to a New Account: Members on our Basic, Standard, and Premium plans can enable people who share their account to transfer profile information either to a new account or an Extra Member sub account – keeping the viewing history, My List, and personalized recommendations.
Whether or not the actually implement this system likely hinges on how well it does in their test markets. That said, Netflix is obviously not a fan of the password sharing that’s been going on. So it’s hard to imagine them not pushing the whole thing through anyway. The post finishes with the following:
We recognize that people have many entertainment choices, so we want to ensure any new features are flexible and useful for members, whose subscriptions fund all our great TV and films. We’ll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world.
Chengyi Long
This all comes just two months after a price hike on subscriptions. Remember kids, the streaming wars have only just begun.
Source: Gamespot
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