News

• HBO Max confirmed “aggressive” plans to tackle password sharing, following in Netflix’s footsteps
• The HBO Max password sharing crackdown will begin to be enforced more rigorously in September 2025
• Subscribers are already complaining about the change to their accounts

Head of streaming and gaming at Warner Bros. Discovery JB Perrette confirmed at the company’s second quarter earnings call that HBO Max will begin an “aggressive” crackdown on password sharing as of September 2025.

It’s a move that follows in the footsteps of rival streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+, marking a 180-turn from previous marketing campaigns encouraging users to share their account details (we all remember those Netflix adverts). The idea is to close existing loopholes and drive profits, though the benefits of doing so aren’t expected to be seen until 2026.

As it stands, HBO Max is undoubtedly one of the best streaming services on the market. It hosts original content including The Last of Us, The White Lotus, Euphoria and Peacemaker, with a quality backlog of classic movies and TV shows added to the platform every month.

However, in a world where streamers are getting more expensive and inaccessible to groups of people (e.g., if you’re a family in the same home, it makes sense to share one account, however, HBO Max does not offer a family subscription tier), the decision to make password sharing harder is one that’s already not going down well with its subscribers.

Early X/Twitter comments from users show that subscribers are already complaining. One user said “that's one way to lose subscriptions quickly,” with another adding, “back in the early Netflix days we all shared passwords like Pokémon cards. Now they want a DNA test before I can watch Euphoria??”

Others have noted how close the announcement is to the pulling of all Cartoon Network content from the platform (don’t worry, you can still find a lot of this on Hulu in the US, while those in Australia can find the network’s shows on Stan). It feels like HBO Max is piling on bad news after bad news, but let’s dive deeper into the methods behind their madness.

Perette explained during the call that months of testing have gone into “who’s a legitimate user who may not be a legitimate user,” adding that the next step is to “turn on the more aggressive language around what needs to happen” so they “are putting the net in the right place, so to speak”. Later in 2025, the crackdown will be happening “in a much more aggressive fashion,” adding “the message language right now has been a fairly soft, cancel-able message, [which will] start to get more fixed and such that people have to take action as opposed to right now, sort of having to be a voluntary process.”

After all of this is established “the real benefit will start probably in the fourth quarter and then kick in in 2026”. But as WBD claims to have added 3.4 million streaming subscribers to its platforms over the last quarter, can we really expect them to hit their new overall target of 150 million subscribers by 2026 if measures like this are being introduced? The fact I’m now having to jump through more hoops just to stream the content I want to is incredibly offputting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more people turn to free streaming alternatives, or dare I say it, cable TV.

It’s not something that HBO Max itself is worried about, though, with its eyes on the prize of a hefty theatrical slate heading our way over the next few years. As WBD’s CEO David M. Zaslav explained on the call: “one of the assets that we have at this company is that we have such – so much compelling storytelling IP that people know everywhere in the world, whether it's Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Lord of the Rings. And then we'll call those the big tent poles, Harry Potter. And then smaller tent poles like The Fugitive, Goonies, Gremlins, Practical Magic that everybody knows.

“Our strategy is [to] light up strategically those big tent poles so that we have two or three of those a year, which provide real stability. We got a great script on Lord of the Rings with Peter Jackson that we're already – that we're moving forward on, and we'll be giving you more detail on that.”

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