cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639
I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That’s it folks. I’ve been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.
They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.
I’ll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I’ve been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it’s time to make it production ready.
Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying “Just buy a plex pass” are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.
And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:
- YES I know I’m unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
- My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users don’t understand what plex pass is, and they shouldn’t have to, that’s why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
- Plex is still removing functionality. I don’t care that “People should pay their fair share”. If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, that’s completely okay. They are removing functionality.
- “But they have cloud costs”. Remote streaming is negligible to them. It’s a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. That’s it.
- “Good luck finding another remote streaming” - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, that’s a separate conversation). All “remote streaming” is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported “free” content that they’re probably losing money on.
In short, I don’t care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. They’re removing functionality that has been free for years. I’m not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.
It’s a very confusing and poorly worded email. My users were equally confused. Not everyone is techy or even deeply aware of how Plex even works. Nor should they be expected to.
The message was designed to confuse and extract money from people who don’t know better. It’s trashy and they should be ashamed.
That said, I’m still using Plex for the time being.
How would you have worded it differently? Since the email needs to be sent because the person is losing a feature (they might not use it because they only stream from you, but they might stream from someone else, so they should be made aware of it)
For starters, they say “you MAY be affected” only once, maybe twice, and everywhere else they say you “will” need to buy the upgrade.
The whole thing could’ve been worded more carefully and cautiously. They know how their service is used, they know the majority of people with accounts are not hosts and never have been, and probably don’t even understand how it all works.
Not only could the whole message have been worded better, more softly. They could’ve used two templates. They have usage metrics, they could see that my user has never ever connected to any other library, only mine, and mine has always had Plex pass. They could’ve sent him a softball message, informing of the lost feature, sure, but assuring him that his service should remain unaffected because the libraries he’s connected to already have Plex pass.
But no. They sent one message, full of FUD, trying to scare people into buying what they don’t need, because money.
They do not care about users, they care about money. It’s been getting more and more clear over the years with no effort put into fixing bugs on the self hosted side. But now it’s crystal clear, to me anyway.