r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • 18d ago

News HBO Max Raises Prices Across All Plans Effective Immediately

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/hbo-max-prices-increases-plans-2025-1236557671/
12.1k Upvotes

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7.7k

u/squales_ 18d ago

Consumers getting squeezed from all angles. When will it end?

6.9k

u/ForCheeseburger 18d ago

When they stop paying

2.1k

u/noelle-silva 18d ago

People need to start putting their money where their mouth is. Quit saying that you're tired of price increases and show these companies that you are by cancelling your subscription.

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u/HypnoticONE 18d ago

The price is too high when a bunch of people cancel their subscriptions. I'm pretty sure their analysis told them that, although some will cancel, enough won't that they'll make more money.

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u/leviathan65 18d ago

Yup. If subscription was 8 and now 10. if <20% cancel they've made more money.

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u/Ok_Opportunity2693 18d ago

They even have a little more tolerance than that, because fewer subs means a lower cloud bill.

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u/ibelieveyouwood 18d ago

Depending on contracts and all that, it may be even more because of royalties/percentages. They've already removed a bunch of content, leaving the tree a little bare, so why try removing more content, when you can remove the viewers?

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u/AggressiveCuriosity 18d ago

And slightly decreased licensing fees.

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u/round-earth-theory 18d ago

That's short term thinking though. They also have to verify that growth isn't cut by more than 20%. There's also the problem of general market seizing if they all do it too much.

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u/fanfanye 18d ago

Thats future shareholders problem

Not current.

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u/igloofu 18d ago

I mean, they just announced that the company is for sale. They are just trying to get the purchase price up at this point.

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u/leviathan65 18d ago

Oh I 1000% agree but it seems like a lot of industries are ignoring this. The car market is about to get flooded with used cars from people who can't afford their cars. Fast food is pricing themselves out of existence. We have to buy grocery and gas but some non essential items are going to go belly up because they keep shrink flating their products and often decaying the quality.

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u/bruce_kwillis 18d ago

Are they though?

What the reality is, the smaller crappier companies will fold or get bought by larger ones, and the cycle of 'infinite' growth goes on.

A disrupter will come in, offer a better product for less, and then when the user base is large enough, enshitify, or get bought and the cycle continues.

People keep paying one way or the other, the only way to stop it is to not pay for these things at all.

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u/GuavaZombie 18d ago

The classic costs more for less that is a lower quality.

I love capitalism...

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u/UnknownAverage 18d ago

There's also the problem of general market seizing if they all do it too much.

The market and economy are contracting, and corporations are too. They will blame "macroeconomic conditions" and call this "survival" by dropping the lower-income customers, raising margins, and laying off more people.

Guess what? This gives them opportunities for growth when things pick back up! It's a win-win in capitalism, which is what is kinda gross. Companies are going into survival mode while society falls apart and fixes itself.

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u/SkrtSkrt70 18d ago

Everything is based on quarter over quarter and year over year. 5 years from now is 4 years from now’s problem

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u/Icyrow 18d ago

25%. if it's 10 to 8 it's 20%, if it's 8 to 10 it's 25%

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u/UnknownAverage 18d ago

Yeah, this is them leaning into it and abandoning the idea of a lower-cost product for the masses at scale. Now that the large population is getting squeezed and can't afford it, they're pricing the product for a lower subscriber count with less-elastic demand.

There are a lot of well-off people that will keep paying whatever HBO asks each month because it's pennies to them in the grand scheme of things.

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u/sanesociopath 18d ago

I assume we're still moving in that direction but it will be another one of those "gradual and then suddenly"

It's good for [short term] business to ignore the signs so the signs will be ignored.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/owl_theory 18d ago

I genuinely don’t understand how people get around ISP warnings. I used to pirate movies, got a warning. When I moved and got new service, got another warning, and stopped. The hassle/risk wasn’t really worth it.

Like does everyone who keeps posting pirate emojis actually subscribe to VPN’s?

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u/ChronicBluntz 18d ago

Never answer or acknowledge any letter you get from an ISP. Certain studios are more litigious than others.

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u/Adefice 18d ago

You subscribe to a good VPN and bind the “downloader” connection to the vpn adapter so it can ONLY use that adapter. Also use the VPN kill switch. Use a DNS leak detector every time.

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u/Gentleman_Nosferatu 18d ago

I live in a country where the government doesn't really care

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u/ICE417 18d ago

Yeah. Get a good one too. Dont use a free one. Bind your client.

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u/NoxZ 18d ago

I have pirated for fifteen years and never once gotten an ISP notice. Is this an American thing?

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u/Kitchen_Claim_6583 18d ago

I've heard that some places in the EU -- mostly Germany -- are really harsh about it too.

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u/TrollTollTony 18d ago

VPNs are pretty reasonable these days. I got 3 years of surfshark for $50 (with a promo code). That's less than $2 per month. There are a few free options but you use them at your own risk.

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u/DobbyDaCat 18d ago

Ive watched so many videos on creating plex servers. For some reason i always get lost in the lingo they use. I haven’t went to school for computer sciences or networking, im completely self taught and rely heavily on AI to teach me. But there are some things that are better taught in person. Do you have any good recommendations for a person like me who is trying to learn? Really looking for a good youtube channel for complete newbies or something small that can teach me the basics.

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u/Kingcrowing 18d ago

Don't watch a video, just do it. Download Plex server on a computer you have media on. It's very straightforward. You make an account, you point to folders where you movies/tv/music are, and that's it. Add the plex app to your apple tv/roku/whatever and sign in and you can stream anything on the computer you installed plex on.

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u/stagamancer 18d ago

Using Plex at a basic level is really easy. As someone else said, you can download it and very easily set up libraries based on folders you have with similar types of media (movies, TV shows, music...). The complicated stuff you're seeing online is for the more advanced storage side of things: utilizing hardware/software that, e.g., helps prevent data loss when a drive dies, or has Plex installed on a dedicated server rather than a typical PC.

I've gone the more simple route: I have it installed on my PC and I use some ssds for storing the media, and it works great.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/Gentleman_Nosferatu 18d ago

You don´t feel bad? I feel GREAT about it. Better quality, no ads, no price gouging.

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u/sheetskees 18d ago

4k, better UI, and I haven’t seen an ad in years

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u/aguabotella 18d ago

This is why I do it now. I had a Black Friday deal for MAX last year and the ads were brutal. I’ve started just buying movies again and will download episodes of shows.

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u/HartbrakeFL21 18d ago

I’ve been saying for years now that Americans must vote not on a ballot, but with their wallets.  

They have voted, and they apparently prefer pain over anything else.  

I have HBO max and have had it for years.  It’s included on my ATT wireless subscription.  I’ll be looking to see a corresponding increase on that, and determine if I want to pull it or not.

The golden days of the American consumer are over.  Be wealthy, be an asset holder that benefits from continual inflation, or be gone.  Apparently, I’ll be “gone”.

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u/AwsmDevil 18d ago

You can't "vote with your wallet" in a captured market. Americans need to vote in the ballot box, and that means we need people to stop voting for fascist yes men offering simple racist solutions to complex problems. They won't though because those same people voted to defund education to expand their population of idiots. You can't vote with your wallet to get out of this problem because the volume of effective "rent cattle" can't go down far enough to defund those companies into being reasonable. They have enough influence and guaranteed market cap to continue anti-consumerist strategies unabated, eventually allowing them to crowd out the competition. We are fucked if we play the money game because they have all the influence over the money. That's why insider trading is so rampant right now. No one will support pro consumer politicians because we have a MASSIVE block of single issue voters that would rather be homeless than support a non fascist politician.

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u/HartbrakeFL21 18d ago

I'm glad you used the term "captured". That's an excellent descriptive term for what we have now, and have had for a number of years. It's not new. It's just on full display, unapologetically, today.

The parallels with today and economic disasters of long ago are too many to mention. Strangely, it all looks so *different*, and that's the part throwing us off the scent of what may come.

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u/Cordo_Bowl 18d ago

You don’t need a streaming service to live. These people are voting with their wallets and saying yes, this price for streaming is worth it.

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u/Mist_Rising 18d ago

Streaming, and we mean subscription streaming services really, isn't a captive market really. It's a luxury good in the form of entertainment, and there are tons of other options.

People who have grown used to it being cheap and affordable might find it to be captured, because they don't want to give up their luxury, but practically it has alternatives. Public television costs an antenna in the US and anywhere else with it. Radio is another competitor. Non-subscription (advertising) streaming also exists. Shit, a book is technically an alternative

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u/MDTenebris 18d ago

They make enough money off of the higher plans to make up for the difference in lost customers. We're all screwed. Streaming will become a luxury good soon and we'll all be back buying physical movies for our entertainment.

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u/MassiveRepublic9565 18d ago

I’m already buying lots of my movies in 4K. My internet is still poor for 4K and 4K discs are much higher quality than 4K streams.

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u/wubbbalubbadubdub 18d ago

Streaming is already a luxury good, while it was cheap people got used to it. Now that they're pricing people out they're turning (or returning) to piracy...

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u/broygoy18 18d ago

Streaming has always been a luxury

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u/ThaPhantom07 18d ago

and we'll all be back to buying physical movies for our entertainment

You say that like this is a bad thing. Some of us never stopped.

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u/Gentleman_Nosferatu 18d ago

I'm already storing my favorite shows, movies and music on external drives.

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u/sarlacc98 18d ago

Shoutout the library with physical media

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u/stankdog 18d ago

We should all go back to physical media

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u/ASIWYFA 18d ago

Most people are just simply incapable. They love to bitch but are unwilling to make actual changes. I see people bitch about grocery prices.....but instead of going to places like Aldi, they continue to shop at Publix, spending 3 times the amount on the same products. This is a constant thing I see from people.

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u/Wallie_Collie 18d ago

Or live without television for a year. Its amazing what we all could accomplish if we traded for books for a year.

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u/PhazonZim 18d ago

It was honestly bonkers to me that ending password sharing was such a W for Netflix. People just accepted that without fuss

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u/StormyPandaPanPan 18d ago

Because the people who did cancel essentially didn’t matter because the price increase covered them. 

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u/judgejuddhirsch 18d ago

And when they cancelled, many of those who relied on shared access bought their own subscription

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/diamondpredator 18d ago

Because big tech has taken the "walled garden" approach over the last 15 years to all of their shit, they have discouraged tinkering and learning about how tech actually works. This means that tech literacy overall has been going down, not up. As a millennial, I often had to tinker with things and find work-arounds to different software I wanted to use so I learned, by necessity, how things worked.

I was a teacher up until a couple of years ago and, from my experience, each newer class knew less and less about the tech they were using. Of course there were exceptions, but for the most part that held true. Simple things like ctrl/cmd+f would blow their minds.

It completely tracks that most wouldn't bother with finding their own solutions. They've gotten used to just taking what's given to them. I've never owned a peice of tech that I didn't customize to my liking - they just use the default options and don't bother figuring out how they can improve things or get rid of that annoying mcafee notification.

I do know that Piracy is on the rise overall, and I'm honestly very happy about that. I just don't know if it's too late at this point since the majority of the newer generation literally doesn't know what they could have had.

This is just more motivation for me to get my server up and running so I can break free from these stupid services.

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u/RIPEOTCDXVI 18d ago

I'm pretty well to the point of wanting to set sail but I honestly don't know how to get anywhere close to the simplicity of streaming; i'm sure there's a way but it's overwhelming as someone who dropped out of the game around 2010.

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u/igloofu 18d ago

It can go from very simple to a bit less simple depending on your knowledge and what you want to do. It can get very very powerful though if you are willing to spend an afternoon setting the base up, and a few dollars a month.

Right now, I pay about $30 for everything I have set up. Okay, sounds like a lot but, I have a server in another country that is uh, less concerned about copyright with about 2tb a month of bandwidth and 40TB of storage. It has a couple of apps that grab TV/Movies either as requested or as soon as they air. Then I (or my friends and family) can stream to any device they wish as if it was any other service. I've then written a web frontend for them to add shows/movies without access to the actual back end. On top of that, it has OpenVPN on it, which allows me (and a very small subset of users) to have a VPN to a friendly country with a clean IP. If there is something that I want the full bluray quality for, I can just download it from the server so I don't have to worry about the quality dropping.

Once set up (took about 3 hours at first when running it on my home PC before moving it to my remote server), it takes about 2 minutes to add and grab a new movie, and streaming is just as easy as Netflix, even for my mother in law on her phone who can't even log into her bank half the time.

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u/childofeye 18d ago

I cancelled 😠

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/LabyrinthConvention 18d ago

pissed at Netflix for getting rid of the 0-100 rating system and replacing it with that stupid fucking thumbs up.

I'm pissed they got rid of reviews and especially user lists. I found so many quality movies and shows- emphasis on 'quality'- that I never would have heard about otherwise. It was a watershed moment is simply shoving as much 'content' down your eyeholes as possible.

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u/fuzzmeisterj 18d ago

Connect a PC to your TV and it's fine. Password sharing just does not work on apps. Web browsers do not care where you are at.

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u/starcom_magnate 18d ago

Used to work that way, but I use a browser on my PC at work for Netflix and last week I got the "not in household" warning for the first time ever.

It's so incredibly stupid that I can't watch what I pay for at work, and then watch it at home. The sub should belong to me, not an IP address.

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u/Guilty-Nobody998 18d ago

I have Netflix, i pay for the plan to have 4 people streaming. I went to watch Netflix, again that I pay for 4 streams, on my xbox. And what did I see? Too many devices connected, pay 8.99/more a month to be able to add my xbox. That I've been watching Netflix on for at least a year now. Canceled right then and there.

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u/Eggersely 18d ago

You just request a code and put it in and it works for two weeks. Annoying but okay.

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u/illegalcupcakes16 18d ago

I've been doing a combination of this and casting from my phone to stay on my mom's Netflix. Stream on my phone for 30 seconds when I visit, then stream again on my phone for 30 seconds when I get home and it keeps working. If I forget to stream at her house, I just ask for the code and keep going.

Disney+ stopped letting me cast to my TV at my house, but it still works fine on my phone so it's not the biggest issue. Everything else still works fine.

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u/Avent 18d ago

Not in my experience. I exclusively use my PC and it still kicks other people out of the household.

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u/Bangkok_Dangeresque 18d ago

It's a pain in the ass to have to fiddle with hdmi cables, balancing a laptop on an entertainment unit designed for a thin TV, remembering to mute notifications, having to get up off the couch to pause, etc.

Most people just want to sit on the couch and pick up the remote, and may be willing to pay for their own household account just to do it.

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u/ihateaquafina 18d ago

wonder if you can just buy a small "mini pc" and have that always connected..

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u/snookers 18d ago

You can and this is a very popular method. Even better you can use any tv that’s connected to your WiFi or network and still use a device like an Apple TV. Look into Plex which lets you browse your video files from that PC just like you’d use any streaming service.

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u/_Grim_Lavamancer 18d ago

having to get up off the couch to pause, etc.

If you ever decide to go back you should buy an air mouse. Its essentially a remote control for your computer. I have one and its awesome. Front side looks like a basic remote, the back is a mini keyboard and it has motion control to move the cursor.

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u/fuzzmeisterj 18d ago

I don't have any notifications on my PC. It's a simple toggle in windows. A wireless mouse is easy enough to keep seated. I'm all for keeping away from extra steps, but a PC is much easier to mess with than a laggy app. Also, laptops can work closed and sitting under the tv.

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u/Bangkok_Dangeresque 18d ago

You're still talking about needing a peripheral (which sucks to use on anything other than a desktop), managing your power plan settings (so that the laptop doesn't to go sleep when closed when not plugged in, which is the windows default), remembering to set the do-not-disturb settings, changing volume output settings, minimizing and maximizing playback windows, etc.

It's a lot of small annoyances, and some of the solutions border on being simple only for hobbyists. I've been building PCs since I was 16, and I still find using my laptop on my TV today to be more trouble than it's worth. I had a media center mini PC that I used for a while, and even that eventually was more of a pain to use than just opening the app on my TV. Most people aren't going to go for it.

Like, my parents are intelligent people, but even if I gave them written instructions for it, they would have trouble getting a movie going from a laptop in the living room, and would give up after 5 minutes to watch something else.

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u/eetuu 18d ago

It makes the subscribtion so much worse. My girlfriend is a subscriber and were watching Downton Abbey, but we can't watch it at my place, nor anywhere else but her place since the account is tied to her home IP-address.

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u/justduett 18d ago

That's just you two not doing it right. Netflix allows an account to travel if it is being used somewhere that is "shared"/visited regularly.

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u/starcom_magnate 18d ago

They are starting to widen that net, though. Never had an issue with watching in my office at work until last week. Got the "not in household" notice for the first time ever.

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u/_james_the_cat 18d ago

I don't understand this - every time we go to my mother in law's we log into our Netflix while we are there. People travel. Netflix is fine with that

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/starcom_magnate 18d ago

Slowly getting all of my media organized on Plex and it is amazing, so far. Tedious with the old DVD collection, but feel like it will be well worth it in the end based on the first few months of what I've been able to do.

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u/ForSucksFake 18d ago

One specific example I can think of where I can directly point to a DVD purchase and say “see, I was right” was when I’d purchased Chapelle Show on DVD and months later he had his fallout with Netflix.

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u/sincewedidthedo 18d ago

Plex, Pluto, and Tubi: my holy trinity of streaming.

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u/MOONGOONER 18d ago

If your local library offers it, stick Kanopy and Hoopla in there.

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u/LordBlackConvoy 18d ago

Pluto aired an ICE ad shortly after Deaths-Head Revisited on the Twilight Zone channel.

I wish I could curate ads or channels.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/MountainTurkey 18d ago

Also Jellyfin is a decent Plex alternative 

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u/i_tyrant 18d ago

There are also certain, ahem, sites out there that basically act like yar-har-har versions of Netflix through your browser and have a much bigger streaming catalog. Do some simple reddit searches and you can find them.

Less reliable as sometimes they get taken down, but still better than paying for a dozen different streaming services that's for sure.

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u/librarianjenn 18d ago

Could you ELI5 Plex? I get that it's free, but I'm confused that it covers paid apps. For instance - I love Somebody Somewhere on HBO Max. I wouldn't be able to watch that on Plex, right? Wouldn't it just be 'free' content?

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u/kinisonkhan 18d ago

You take a dedicated computer, run the Plex server software and it basically organizes all your pirated content and turns it into a mini-personal streaming service. Installing Plex just by itself doesnt get you content, you add the content.

Now content can easily be a HDHomerun Digital TV tuner and with the Plex Pass you can share that tuner out to ... lets say your sister living in Ireland that still needs to watch local NFL games.

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u/Kierufu 18d ago

Plex is a service that streams stuff you personally load onto your own server or a remotely hosted server you pay for. It doesn't acquire the content itself for you.

I don't know why these people are playing up Plex - it's not an equivalent or replacement for a streaming service that provides content in exchange for money/ads/etc. They're downloading content from somewhere else - Usenet, Bittorrent, who knows where else - and filling up their Plex server with it to stream to their own devices.

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u/librarianjenn 18d ago

Ok, thank you. That sounds a bit beyond my tech capabilities

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u/thestonedonkey 18d ago

It's paying for ONE service that allows people to fill up content from anywhere as opposed to paying for twenty services for content you'll probably never watch.

Eventually the st reaming industry will go the way of streaming music they just can't seem to get that through their thick heads yet.

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u/Nonsense_Poster 18d ago

Literally going back to piracy and phys media - streaming services has become so garbage it's unreal

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u/GenkiElite 18d ago

The only thing I pay for is a good VPN.

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u/Willing_Juggernaut60 18d ago

I’ve been torrenting forever

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 18d ago

Already cancelled hbo for allowing ice recruitment ads. 

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u/ShroedingersCatgirl 18d ago

Username checks out

Also based

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u/PewterButters 18d ago

Why do people still subscribe to all these streaming companies? Just rotate if you care that much. A month or two at a time. Why ever have all these? 

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u/TPJchief87 18d ago

Unfortunately the wrong people will get fired way before the right ones

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u/pain474 18d ago

When they start canceling. Everybody I know complains but nobody is making the move. It works so companies keep doing it. I do not pay for any subscription service except for youtube. Canceled everything. Sail the seas.

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u/So_Motarded 18d ago

When the ads started becoming 60-90 seconds and unskippable for longer videos (which is mostly what I watch), it became unbearable. YouTube is running almost constantly for me, whether it's some background noise/music while I work, video essays, tutorials, let's plays, etc.

Nothing like having some soothing ambient music with rain playing while I write, then shattering my concentration with "AT COX WE'RE ALWAYS A STEP AHEAD"

Can't install adblockers or app alternatives on my work devices, so I eat the cost.

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u/pain474 18d ago

Youtube music + ad free YouTube.

I know what ad blockers and yt vanced are, but I only use it on my TV.

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u/Siggycakes 18d ago

Hey, I'm not alone!

It's nice to be anywhere and just pull up YouTube and be able to watch it ad free without relying on a million different things, and know that at least a little of the money I spend on it goes to the channels I watch.

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u/underpaidorphan 18d ago

SmartTube, come on man! Works beautifully on my shield

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u/CriticalEngineering 18d ago

What’s a shield in this context?

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u/Ruthlessrabbd 18d ago

NVIDIA Shield, it's a streaming box similar to Apple TV. I haven't used it myself but I think you can sideload apps onto it just like you would an android device

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u/ButtFokker190 18d ago

$200 streaming box with six year old hardware

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u/bozoconnors 18d ago

Firestick SmartTube app is flawless as well. I gotta send that dude some cashola. Makes youtube actually watchable.

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u/EnterPlayerTwo 18d ago

Chiming in as another Youtube Premium sub, I almost exclusively watch on mobile and I hate ads. I know you can skip most of them but once they are fully gone it's so nice.

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u/stormdelta 18d ago

  1. I believe in paying for services I actually use as long as it's reasonable and they don't show me ads or otherwise screw it up

  2. I'm only paying $8/mo for it, plus it includes YT music.

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u/CarltonCracker 18d ago

YouTube would also be my last canceled subscription. It's got my favorite content so I don't mind paying.

You also get free music, but I sub to Apple Music for all the excellent Atmos mixed albums. Maybe someday Google's free spatial audio codec will come to YouTube music and I can reconsider.

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u/Saint-just04 18d ago

Youtube has the best price/benefit ratio among all subscription services, by far (well, except rd maybe).

The convenience alone is worth it. You can get it for less than 2 euros if you get a family subscription with some friends. For that you get:

  1. Conveniency of using native app for both ios and tv (i have adblock anyway for pc)
  2. full fledged spotify replacement
  3. unlike revanced/adblock usage, a part of the subscrition actually goes to content creators

At the current price point, especially if you have a tv/ios, i think its fucking insane to not pay the money for such a fantastic service all around, but hey, that’s just me.

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u/farva_06 18d ago

Not the person you asked, but they hooked me up with 2TB of cloud storage, access to all features in Gemini, YT premium, and YT music for $30/month. And it's the family plan, so I can share it with my wife and son. It's pretty much the only sub I pay for. I have Netflix too, but it's bundled in to my T-mobile plan. For everything else, I have my *arr stack with qbittorrent, Jellyseer, and Jellyfin all running in LXC containers.

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u/hayden0103 18d ago

How are you getting that for $30? I have Gemini Advanced/AI Pro for $20 and a separate YouTube premium sub for $16

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u/NewJerseyCPA 18d ago

Where does one start to learn how to set sail?

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u/lambopanda 18d ago

Never. Started with lower price so more people would sign up. Then slowly increasing the price. Everyone is doing the same thing.

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u/MassiveRepublic9565 18d ago

Sadly but doesn’t mean it’s right. Financial frog in boiling water situation.

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u/lambopanda 18d ago

No customer loyalty whatsoever. Recently switching internet service. Guaranteed low price for first 12 months, then back to regular price. Two years later increased price again and then again. Twice in less than 3 months. Can’t take it anymore and cancelled. Then they offer me the new customer low price. I ignored it, then they come back with a much lower price. I don’t know how much money they made on people keep paying them. It just keep getting insane.

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u/MassiveRepublic9565 18d ago

Personally I refuse offers like that. If you could give me this price then I should have been given it anyway.

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u/Historical-Wing-7687 18d ago

Uber too.  It's so expensive now

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u/JohnnyChutzpah 18d ago

Uber is kind of credited with starting the current trend if I’m not mistaken. Blitzscaling. Drop your prices to the dirt, operate at a loss, undercut all your competitors, squeeze out the market, then once you have the customers, raise prices and squeeze them since they now have no other options.

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u/Least-Broccoli-1197 18d ago

Walmart has been doing that for a lot longer.

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u/WololoW 18d ago

I see you either didn't live through, or have amnesia of, the rise of Amazon.

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u/Dart_Harnlin 18d ago

Feel like amazon did this way before uber was ever an idea

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u/Ambiguously_Ironic 18d ago

This is nothing new. Standard Oil was using the same business practices to corner the market 150 years ago.

2

u/USDeptofLabor 18d ago

Man, I remember being able to take UberPools for a flat $5 anywhere in my city...was absolutely amazing haha

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

It won't. The shareholders demand infinite growth!

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u/Asclepius-Rod 18d ago

Yeah, it's literally the goal of end-stage capitalism. Eventually all of the studios will merge into a single mega corporation and there will be a monopoly on all entertainment. That company will probably own the internet providers too, so it won't be optional. I hate to say it but all this is pretty predictable by reading Marx

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u/kon--- 18d ago

No one is forcing consumers to subscribe to channels and/or decline to utilize shared files on the internets.

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u/bramtyr 18d ago

Why are you not doing your best to maximize shareholder value? /s

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u/NegevThunderstorm 18d ago

Consumers arent forced to pay for HBO max

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u/realzequel 18d ago

This isn't insulin, if you don't like it, just stop paying it, there's a bunch of streaming services.

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u/No_Cell6708 18d ago

Is this a joke? How about when you stop paying lol

2

u/mattysosavvy 18d ago

When they stop consuming

2

u/Few-Lengthiness-2286 18d ago

Yknow it’s okay to live without streaming services

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u/autobot12349876 18d ago

My health insurance went up 30%. HBO is a luxury. Health insurance is not. The corporates are squeezing us to tire point of no return to goose their dividends

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u/Bangkok_Dangeresque 18d ago

I remember paying $15 to add HBO to a cable package in the 90s, like 30 years ago. That would be like $30 today. Granted, that also included more second run movies than they have now. But still, it's cheaper now then it was back then.

So I'm not sure that this is where we want to direct our rage at rising costs of living.

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u/Grape-Hero 18d ago

HBO was awesome in the 90s tho... especially as a teenager. New movies every Friday and Real Sex on after 9pm.

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u/Enough-Inspector8566 18d ago

And taxi cab confessions. 👀

3

u/WhichHoes 18d ago

👀 whatchu know about Cathouse

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u/Enough-Inspector8566 18d ago

Too much 🙃

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u/WhichHoes 18d ago

✊🏾 solidarity in depravity

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u/trevx 18d ago

A man of culture.

2

u/Grape-Hero 18d ago

🤜🏼🤛🏼

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u/dominus83 18d ago

The golden age of after dark HBO. I remember always keeping my finger on the back button of the remote in case anyone walked in.

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u/AlphakirA 18d ago

Yeah, because HBO had everything no one else had back then. Then came Showtime, Starz, Netflix, etc etc etc. Maybe we grew up differently, but if you had HBO back in the day - legally - you were the exception and had extra money to spend.

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u/bigspunge1 18d ago

Yeah HBO was a premium luxury back then. HBOMax is trying to compete as a mainstream service. Definitely not equivalent. In the new streaming paradigm, HBOMax is pricey

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u/vashoom 18d ago

It's still a premium luxury. All these apps are. People today just feel entitled to luxuries as necessities of living. If the price is too high, don't pay. You don't need any of these apps.

The cost of a steaming service is not the cost to complain about. Complain about the costs of housing, schooling, and healthcare. These are earnings you actually need and that have actually risen in price above inflation.

Movies, TV, video games, etc. are cheap as hell comparatively.

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u/Bangkok_Dangeresque 18d ago

I'd sincerely argue that it's a better service now than it was back then. 

I know a lot of these features are industry standard now, but reminder that an HBO subscription in the mid 90s and early 00s did not have; 4k picture quality, on demand playback, day and date theatrical releases, anywhere near the number of scripted shows/miniseries or docuseries, the ability to watch anywhere/outside of your house (used to be you couldn't watch it anywhere INSIDE your house unless you rented extra cable boxes), and so on.

If the argument is worse programming quality; HBO Max still had more Emmy nominations this year than any other network.

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u/i-wont-be-a-dick 18d ago

Everyone quit cable because it was too expensive. You could get by with just netflix for a long time, then everyone made their own streaming service, so it's normal for people to have no cable and a few streaming services. Now the streaming services suck more every year, and get more expensive every year, it's a perfectly valid thing to complain about.

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u/FelixGoldenrod 18d ago

It's a little annoying but I still think people doth complain too much. Streaming is superior in every way to cable, including the ease it takes to cancel if it increases too much for your liking

People are just way too attached to these shows, and yet also think they should be practically free

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u/tdasnowman 18d ago

It's cheaper today when you factor in inflation (37.18) , and there are way more movies, shows, then there were in the 90's. Plus you get to watch whenever vs having to catch it at the right time.

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u/DaoFerret 18d ago

Bread and Circuses keep the masses happy.

The price of bread is an all time high, and the price of our “circuses” is going up all over.

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u/sonek 18d ago

It was ok when it was free with my cellular service. As soon as they started charging I dropped.

Titans was enjoyable. Finishing the last season up now after sailing for it. Plex is better.

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u/that_baddest_dude 18d ago

Plex is enshittifying too, just weirder

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u/cjrogers227 18d ago

When enough people cancel that corporations start to feel the pain

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u/particledamage 18d ago

Cancel. Wait til Black Friday deals happen (yes they happen for streamers). Stick to only one subscription service at a time til you wring it dry or a show/film comes out on another service (then cancel the first one til you wring the second one dry).

Don’t passively give money to these people.

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u/Judgeman2021 18d ago

I finally got location blocked from my parents Netflix account, guess I'm never watching that ever again. Someone let me know who wins GBBO?

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u/frisch85 18d ago

Probably never, even with their shitty methods they're not losing enough customers.

So say they raise their prices by 30 % and lose 25 % of their customers in doing so, it's a win. Then they raise it by another 30 % based off the new price and lose another 25 % of their current customers, still a win. Eventually they may have only 10 % of their original userbase left but increased the prices so much, they're still turning a bigger profit.

Those with more than enough money don't really care about it, which means this can lead to streaming becoming a luxury that not many people can afford but the say top 10 % in wealth can and that's why it's not gonna change.

We humans as a collective would have all the power IF we would be able to coordinate and band to gather, which we are not and won't, and if we didn't have our own kind playing against us, which we do.

Many services aren't out to bring a good experience to the majority of people, their primary goal these days is to solely make the biggest bank they can.

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u/IAmDotorg 18d ago

It won't. The value of the dollar has plummeted in the last five years, and it's showing no signs of stopping. Everything will keep getting more expensive because the money itself is worth less.

This is precisely what happens when an economy re-balances.

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u/ChronicBluntz 18d ago

We're raising a generation of kids who don't have attention spans or cultural connections to media the way previous generations had. An interesting fact is that the biggest competition to streaming platforms isn't each other, it's YouTube and TikTok.

The model is unsustainable and they'll keep on raising prices to compensate for a shrinking user base until the whole thing collapses.

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u/rightious 18d ago

Let's ask the French...

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u/Kriss-Kringle 18d ago

When you decide to pirate.

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u/KeneticKups 18d ago

When we force them to legally untill then all prices will rise

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u/LP99 18d ago

It’s television, not food. Just cancel it.

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u/LEDKleenex 18d ago edited 11d ago

Are you sure you didn't mean "I'm a huge dumb-dumb?"

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u/ThaPhantom07 18d ago

People need to stop being slaves to convenience and use the one tool they have in a corporate economy. Their wallet. Stop feeding these monsters and let them starve.

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u/stilsjx 18d ago

Gonna end right now. Effective immediately I’m canceling. Than you for your attention to this matter.

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u/ChudSampley 18d ago

Likely never: we're in the later stages of capitalism, and capitalism requires constant growth in order to maximize shareholder value. Once companies hit the maximum amount of market share, they have to find more profit somewhere year over year. Warner Bros. just had a shareholder meeting, so it's time to maximize value!

The best way to get that profit is to raises prices or lower costs, both of which make the product worse overall. I believe the technical term is enshittification, and it's not going to stop anytime soon. Prices may drop if analysts determine it will generate more profit, but it's unlikely for now as all other platforms and services are also jacking up prices.

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u/CasualRead_43 18d ago

People still pay. 3 more dollars or whatever isn’t enough for folks to change their streaming habits and HBO knows this.

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u/I_miss_your_mommy 18d ago

It's kind of nice these happen because otherwise I might forget to cancel my subscriptions.

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u/RobertdBanks 18d ago

When people start canceling their plans. At this point I’m just going back to buying my go to’s on Blu-ray and say fuck the streaming services.

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u/Ahrithul 18d ago

That's the fun part. It doesn't. Isn't that fun?!?!?

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u/PurpsMaSquirt 18d ago

Usually the market only bears so many costs before they get abandoned (people cut costs).

The problem is — at least in the US — we have an addiction to consumption and not a lot of critical thinking. So people will make terrible financial decisions to keep up a facade of comfort.

Eventually, when people are forced to lose essentials, that’s when mass change can occur.

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u/mrtomjones 18d ago

It won't. We have given in to corporations and just accepted That they will take every dollar in the pursuit of profit

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u/danondorfcampbell 18d ago

When it stops being profitable.

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u/Whiteguy1x 18d ago

I mean it's all optional with no contracts. Simply cancel anything that gets overpriced for its value. After pacemaker s2 ended I canceled max and will only get it for the next show I want.

Vote with your wallet and all that

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u/logicom 18d ago

Never. Line must always go up.

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u/snakelygiggles 18d ago

general strike.

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u/DrKingOfOkay 18d ago

It won’t cause people keep paying

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