You might want to start preparing yourself to get kicked off your friend’s HBO Max account, as the password sharing crackdown is coming.
There’s only so much each streaming service can grow because there’s only so many people in the world, so in recent years these services came up with an annoying little idea: make it so that you can only be logged into one household at a time so that you can’t share your account with your friend. It stinks! Netflix does it, Disney Plus has started doing it, and now, while speaking at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit (via Deadline), Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO and president of global streaming and games JB Perrette (bit of a mouthful of a title, there) has shared that HBO will soon send out reminders to Max subscribers about password sharing with some “very early, gentle messaging.”
Perrette went on to explain, “this is an art and a science to try and tighten the filter of who’s in there. We’ll start some early messaging with some people who we think are in the higher tier of usage. We will offer a way to essentially add a member, starting in the first quarter. We will then start gradually as we get the data and start figuring out, with some explicit and implicit signals, how good we are at detecting. And then as we go through ’25, you’re going to see the filters get tighter and tighter.”
That’s obviously quite annoying, but I suppose the brightside is that HBO has also shared some release windows for some of its biggest shows (via Deadline). The long-awaited third season of Euphoria is apparently currently targeting a 2026 return, with filming set to begin early next year, so you’ve still got quite a wait for that one.
The White Lotus’ third season is coming a lot sooner though, luckily, as that’s set to arrive in February. Perrette said that Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is due for a summer premiere, but HBO and Max Content CEO and chairman Casey Bloys said it was due for a late 2025 release earlier this year, and sources that spoke with Deadline said this still seems to be the case. And as previously mentioned, The Last of Us season 2 is on track for Q2. So, you might end up having to pay more, but there’s lots of bits coming, at least! Bit of a consolation prize, though.
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