In recent months we've seen Netflix putting prices up and all thought, "ah well, that's not my problem, that's my family member who actually pays for the accounts' problem".
Well, it looks like Netflix are ready to scale up the war on shared logins and tests are now being carried out overseas on a potential and worrying solution.
The streaming giant is using its markets in Costa Rica, Peru and Chile to test an extra fee for subscribers who share their login details outside of their own primary household.
The company said it will take time to evaluate the results in the three initial countries before they consider a rollout of the fees in other areas.
"So for the last year, we’ve been working on ways to enable members who share outside their household to do so easily and securely, while also paying a bit more. And over the next few weeks, we’ll launch and test two new features for our members in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru" - Chengyi Long Director, Product Innovation
There are options for how to switch it over as well.
Add an Extra Member: Members on our Standard and Premium plans will be able to add sub-accounts for up to two people they don’t live with - each with their own profile, personalized recommendations, login and password - at a lower price: 2,380 CLP in Chile, 2.99 USD in Costa Rica, and 7.9 PEN in Peru
Transfer Profile to a New Account: Members on the Netflix Basic, Standard, and Premium plans can enable people who share their account to transfer profile information either to a new account or an Extra Member sub-account - keeping the viewing history, My List, and personalized recommendations
It’s believed that those extra fees would work out to be between $2-3 U.S. Dollars for each extra subscriber in those test markets, so around 3 to 4 dollars Australian.
While this is unlikely to stop the sharing of passwords it's believed it may have some effect on the issue as Netflix has seen slower growth since hitting 222 million global subscribers.
This is down to password sharing and there is now more competition in a saturated streaming service market across the globe.
Netflix has enjoyed massive success with recent shows like "Bridgeton", "Squid Game", "The Witcher", "Money Heist" and "Stranger Things".
With new seasons of some of those shows either in the works or ready to drop, it's no surprise they want to start bringing in some more revenue.