The Service That Lets You Build Your Own Streaming Library Just Announced a Wild Price Increase
www.ign.com
The price of Lifetime Plex Pass plans will be increasing to $749.99 on July 1.

Plex has announced a massive price increase on the service’s Lifetime Plex Pass. On July 1, the lifetime subscription option will go from $249.99 to $749.99, an increase of 200%. The price hike will only apply to new subscribers, with no changes to monthly or annual subscription pricing.

    • badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      23 hours ago

      While that’s true, it is in the standard VC playbook to make that move. Since they seem to be using that playbook, there will come a point in the monetization program where the lifetime membership becomes a blocker, which is overcome by diluting the lifetime account to increase the appeal of the subscription by comparison.

      So, while nobody in here is named Nostradamus, it does not take a clairvoyance to see the future in this case. Countless other companies have followed this same program, with only minor variation, to extract revenue from the product like a strip mine. If I see 100 companies perform a 15-or-so step monetization spiral, it is not a leap of logic to think Plex is going to do steps 9-15 since we’ve just seen them do steps 1-8.

      • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish
        1·
        15 hours ago

        The lifetime membership will never be a blocked thanks to this price update.

        I’ve never had a lifetime license be taken away other than the company going out of business.

        • badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          13 hours ago

          No, they can’t just breach the contract you have with them, of course, but the VC playbook has a play for that.

          What they will do is create a different service tier that does not include the same features as the standard or lifetime plans have. That tier will initially have some “value adds” that are of little interest to most users. Then, slowly, features will disappear from the other tiers, and a greater percentage of users will be drawn to that one because the “standard” one is increasingly lacking.

          Eventually, Plex Standard will be quite anemic, with at least a couple must-have features available to only GigaPlex members. Because you’re a “valued lifetime customer”, you’ll get the option to convert your lifetime membership into 90-365 days of free GigaPlex.

          So, Plex wins their game. The lifetime members practically all either switch to monthly premium service or leave, both of which are outcomes that are to their benefit. Nobody took away your lifetime membership, they just transformed it to garbage.

          Its not every company, but it is every company owned by venture capital.