This Is How It Ends - Plex Edition

In case you missed it, Plex (the company that makes the media server software) is again raising their prices, by a drastic amount. Some time ago, they already raised their prices, from $80ish to $250, while simultaneously killing off remote streaming for free accounts. Which in and of itself is absurd because none of that streaming data is being passed through Plex servers, they're just handling discovery and authentication.

...but I digress. That was already a pretty big jump in price.

Now? They're doing it again! Except this time, they're tripling the price a second time, going from $250 all the way to an absolutely asinine $750. Yes. You heard that right. The better part of a full grand.

Anyone who can read between the lines here knows that, effectively, Plex Pass Lifetime dies on July 1st. It's a classic move. Technically, yes, they still offer it. But the pricing is so absurd that no one is going to buy in at that price. It also has the effect of goading people into buying in at the $250 price point (which is already quite high, IMO), lest they miss out, potentially forever.

(If I were to hazard a guess here, the reason they haven't ended lifetime yet is because they know full well that actually ending lifetime will cause lifetime pass holders to get uneasy and begin looking for the exit, because anyone cursed with pattern recognition probably knows what's coming after that move.)

What I predict is going to happen over the next few years based on that good ol' pattern recognition, and I really hope I'm wrong here for the sake of friends still using Plex:

Plex finally kills lifetime. They can claim that no one bought in at $750, and since no one wants it, well...it's dead, sorry. Should have bought in more if you wanted it to stay around.

But Plex needs more money, so subscription prices begin increasing. They already did this once, by turning the one-time fee for mobile remote streaming into a subscription (and only giving those who already paid the one time fee a few months of the new subscription for free). But seeing as they felt the need to jack up the price of lifetime, I feel like the problem of "we need to make more money" is going to come around again, and this time it's going to be in the form of subtle increases to monthly Plex Pass/Remote Pass holders.

Plex begins crippling lifetime pass holders. They stop getting new features, or, and I expect a revolt if this happens, they begin removing existing features from lifetime pass holders. They already did this with the free tier (killing remote streaming unless you hold a pass, or the server owner pays for one), I fully expect them to do this to drive subscription sales if they get themselves into another money crunch.

I also fully expect that they have lifetime pass holders all on tiers, internally, and they could say "well, if you bought lifetime before so and so date, you won't get these new features and will need a subscription".

I know this is me just assuming the worst and maybe Plex is this do-good company that is fighting for my best interests and they really, seriously don't want to raise prices. 

But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the pattern recognition alarm is going off, loudly here. Every time some service has offered a lifetime option then introduced subscriptions, without fail a majority of them find a way to force everyone--even those that already paid--into paying that subscription. 

As I mentioned earlier, I really do hope I'm wrong about this. But given how shitty things have been as of late, I fully expect the worst.