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.
are they insane?
From a purely profit-oriented perspective, no. They’re setting up a pretext to eliminate the lifetime license plan due to a lack of interest. No sane person would pay that kind of lump sum for the service (and the insane ones will bring in triple the revenue), so they’ll claim that there is no market for it. After that, they’re free to crank up the periodic subscription prices.
Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by profiteering opportunism.
it’s their own product, who are they pretending to fool?
Stakeholders. Journalists. The market. The ignorant public. They’re constructing a narrative to shield themselves and minimize the hit to their reputation when they stop offering lifetime license plans. The announcement won’t look nearly as damning if it contains a reference to the falling number of new lifetime customers, even if it omits the context of why that number has been falling.
So they are “shielding” themselves from a reputation drop by making an incredibly naked attempt and pushing the price to the roof so nobody wants it?
I mean, come on… if they had increased it $20 by $20 until nobody wants it, I would buy your hypothesis, but this is like pooping on my Director’s desk while he is in the office to get fired
How is this less blatant than just announcing they are cancelling life time subscriptions? or even better, just removing the option without any announcement?
Does this already have a name? If not, can we call it “Riccitiello’s Law”?
it’s called capitalism
Not really. Their plan for a while now is to convert all to subscriptions and this is just their latest salvo. Next up is getting rid of it completely due to “no demand” and then kicking existing lifetime accounts to some static version that won’t be supported.
then why not just do that? who are they pretending to fool?
Good point! Everyone that sees the news on this is either going to already be using Plex or not internalize it because it isn’t relevant to them.
It seems like they’re jumping through an awful lot of hoops to bamboozle some tiny number of potential customers that happen to be in the market for self-hosted media streaming right then at the time of the announcement of the end of the lifetime subscription.
Yes.