I’m done supporting plex and spreading good about Plex. After seeing a email from Plex stating that you will need a streaming pass or you would be able to use Plex. No thanks. Maybe you guys need to get better movies, or actually go somewhere with the app. But it’s ridiculous. Annnnd they don’t know how to send emails on time. As this happened on the 29th and only got the email today on the 1st. You guys suck
5 Likes
All your shared servers have already a Plex Pass.
Thus, you are not affected by the change.
If the owner of the shared server has a Plex Pass, all their friends can stream for free.
See the FAQ section on this blog post: https://www.plex.tv/blog/important-2025-plex-updates/
While your statements are true, OP has a point. Users got emails that were confusing and caused a lot of churn for them – the day the change went live. It doesn’t impact them due to my lifetime Plex Pass, but it was a complete miss from the PR/Marketing standpoint, and almost smelled of misleading users into buying something they didn’t need.
The email specifically stated We noticed that you’ve accessed libraries from friends and family in the past and you may be affected by this change and then follows it up with To continue streaming from these libraries remotely, you’ll need a Remote Watch Pass.
That is shady shady shady.
Only after that does it say Alternatively, server owners can purchase a Plex Pass.
It’s clear that server connection history for users was reviewed, and these emails were targeted. That server information has the owner and their Plex Pass status. The way this was worded is almost predatory. There’s no way around it.
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Agreed, we just spent 10minutes discussing in a group chat whether the Server owner can have the Remote Watch Pass or whether it’s required per user.
Even after checking the website and comparing features we were only certain when I scrolled even further down to see the below under Remote Watch Pass
" No. To stream personal content remotely from a Plex Media Server, you only need one of the following:
- The admin account for the Plex Media Server has an active Plex Pass
- Your account has an active Plex Pass
- Your account has an active Remote Watch Pass"
It’s amazing how much money gets spent on rubbish no one asked for, things get changed for a worse UX and then Plex hit people with “we need more money, we’re poorly managed!”
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Bingo. The intentional misleading and aggressive gaslighting is a very bad look. Too much confusion and people keep asking me if they need to buy a plex pass to remain in our plex home.
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That is in my opinion the right order. Because the remote Watch Pass is much cheaper than the full blown Plex Pass.
Are you saying that the more expensive option should have been mentioned first?
I am certain that this would have been called “shady” by even more people.
I’m saying that sending emails to users where it’s known what the Plex Pass status of their server owners is, without filtering that list, or including a number like (X of Y server owners have Plex Pass) makes it sound like the user MUST purchase something. Burying the lead that potentially (likely more often than not) the user is connecting to 1 family member’s server, and if the data shows they have a Plex Pass, they have no action to take, is indeed shady.
The data was withheld, the phrasing and structure strategically formatted to cause a non-technical, non-server owner, to click on the link to purchase something. Predatory.
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I must agree. If i had known about the price increase I would’ve bought the lifetime pass. But i literally just got the email. So ill find another service. I dont do scammy subscriptions to watch things i already own.
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To be fair, the way Plex checks for the stream being remote is simplistic. If you configure any kind of VPN for your home network, you can be “locally” watching anything even out in the desert. 
I’ll say it anywhere I remember to:
This Plex Pass Remote Pass requirement is just an attempt to crack down on people that sell access to their servers. Without a Pass, they now have to pay Plex SOMETHING when their server is shut down for a TOS violation, which either will cause them to give up after paying for a pass the 10th time, or the very least Plex gets a cut of the action via repeated Plex Pass sales.
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