Sharing passwords for Netflix is widespread, but the streaming giant already announced last year that it now wants to take stronger action against it. Next, it seems, US customers will also be asked to pay.
In some regions, Netflix has been experimenting with procedures for a long time to prevent the sharing of an account or password with users outside of their own household and to persuade them to have their own paid subscription. Appropriate steps have been reported again and again – and now things seem to be getting serious in the United States.
The subject was now discussed with shareholders. Netflix reports that they tried sharing accounts in four countries in the first quarter and were satisfied with the results. As a result, a “wide-scale rollout” of the feature is already planned – “including the USA, in the second quarter,” it continues.
Under the “paid sharing” model, users have to pay an additional membership fee in order to be able to create profiles for users outside of the account holder’s household. Account holders must therefore specify a primary place of use; This includes the users within the network in their own household. If you also want to use profiles for users outside the household/network, you have to pay an additional fee.
It can be assumed that a number of Netflix users will be affected by such a step. It is estimated that more than 100 million households use account sharing. The model envisages that in the USA only standard and premium users can create additional users at prices of $15.49 and $19.99 per month respectively. An additional user can be created on the Standard level, and two can also be set up on Premium; the additional fee remains to be seen.
Netflix has tested the model in Canada, New Zealand, Europe and Portugal and is “satisfied with the results”. With the introduction of the model, many subscribers apparently initially reacted by discontinuing their subscriptions, but with a slight delay, more previous co-users then took out their own subscriptions and the number of subscribers increased overall.
From June 6th to 10th Netflix Geeked Week will take place as a virtual fan event. Among other things, Resident Evil, Cuphead and Cyberpunk Edgerunners as well as Netflix games are presented there.
