Beginning in September, HBO Max will start cracking down on password sharing, according to JB Perrette, head of streaming and games at Warner Bros. Discovery, during the company’s second quarter earnings call.
Here’s what the HBO Max support page says about account sharing.
HBO Max accounts are intended for the account owner (the person who created the account) and the people they live with.
If you don’t live with the account owner, you need to sign up for your own HBO Max account.
HBO Max has been sending messages to users for the past couple months, asking them to create a new account for people using an account outside of the owner’s household. However, those messages could easily be closed out. Next month, the service won’t give users the option to skip the message.
“The message language right now has been a fairly soft, cancelable message,” Perrette said, noting that the message will change “such that people have to take action as opposed to right now sort of having to be a voluntary process.” He says that HBO Max will determine “who’s a legitimate user who may not be a legitimate user,” then give the more “aggressive” message to anyone who isn’t an account owner or in the owner’s household.
The company believes that having users sign up for their own accounts will boost revenue by Q4 of this year and into next year.
