Geek Culture
Netflix cracks down on password sharing worldwide
After a delay, Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is reaching U.S. and international subscribers. After experiencing cancellations in regions where it had already implemented “paid sharing,” the streamer delayed the debut till the summer. U.S. Netflix consumers must either remove people from their account or pay $7.99/month for an additional membership for non-household members.
In weeks and months, many of worldwide markets will undergo similar transformations.
Current members can examine which devices are signed into their account and remove unwanted ones, as well as reset their password, to make this transfer smoother.
A “Transfer Profile” feature lets Netflix account sharers move their viewing history and watchlist to their own account.
Netflix informed investors that despite early cancellations, the password enforcement will benefit its long-term development and financial health.
Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said the password enforcement in its first supported markets was similar to how subscribers reacted to pricing increases during its first-quarter earnings.
“We see an initial cancel reaction and then we build out of that, both in terms of membership and revenue as borrowers sign up for their own Netflix accounts and existing members purchase that extra member facility for folks that they want to share with,” Peters told investors on the April earnings call. “First of all, it was a strong validation to see consistent results in these new countries, because there are different market characteristics different from each other and also from the original Latin American rollout countries,” he said.
Netflix tested the feature in Latin America before adding Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain this year. It will reach more global markets today, including Brazil, Bolivia, Belize, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Philippines, Malaysia, Israel, Thailand, Taiwan, Switzerland, Sweden, and others.
The corporation may have postponed the crackdown in Q1 to avoid hurting net additions. Last quarter, the corporation added 1.75 million global customers, below Wall Street’s 3 million projection, to 232.5 million accounts.
It announced at results that U.S. members would receive the password-sharing adjustments “on or before” June 30. Netflix may have accelerated the timing.
Netflix revealed on its blog today that it will email U.S. account sharers.
“One household per Netflix account,” the firm advises. “Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are—at home, on the go, on holiday—and take advantage of new features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices,” the post adds.
The email, labeled “An update on sharing,” lists options and links to support documentation.
Netflix explains in a press email that it is “now starting to roll out updates to sharing to countries around the world, including the U.S.”
Netflix has yet to see the effects of a password crackdown in the U.S., where it faces increased competition for users’ time and money.
Today, HBO Max becomes Max, a new service that combines HBO and Discovery+ content, doubling the amount of programming. Paramount+ will add Showtime next month on June 27. Disney plans to merge Disney+ and Hulu into one app. Subscribers get more content with some price increases. Netflix is charging more for the same.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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