Price hikes are coming to Discovery+ and probably Netflix, too

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. Over the past few months, pretty much every major streaming service has looked at the piles of money they haven’t been giving to writers and actors and thought, ‘Hmm, how can we make these even bigger?’” It’s decidedly not through original, quality content that people actually want to watch; that’s getting canceled, un-renewed, and disappeared left and right. It’s through subscribers, who are being asked to pay even more money for less content on the daily.

The latest to join in on this trend is Discovery+, which Warner Bros. Discovery is still pedaling as a stand-alone service despite the company’s insistence that Max is The One To Watch. Starting today, the service’s ad-free tier is rising from $6.99 to $8.99 in the U.S., with ad-supported streaming remaining at $4.99 (via Deadline). At least the raised price is still cheaper than Max’s $15.99 per month, for anyone who really wants to immerse themselves in the wonderful, wretched world of Kitchen Nightmares without being distracted by cheap fluff like Succession and The White Lotus.

Discovery+ isn’t the only streamer likely to join the price hike party in coming months. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Netflix is also planning to raise fees on its ad-free tier “a few months after” the writers strike ends, although sources could not say exactly when or how much. (Netflix declined to comment on WSJ’s story.) If this feels like déjà vu, it’s likely because the company has already taken many steps to act like they’re not actually raising prices while consistently chipping away at lower-priced options—from instituting their incredibly unpopular password-sharing crackdown to removing more affordable plan tiers. The timing of the hike allegedly being pegged to the writers strike is also fishy; hopefully, it’s more of a “we’re just so busy figuring out a deal” thing and less of a “we want to make it look like it’s the actors’ fault that you have to pay more” thing. Hopefully, if nothing else, this will inspire the studio to actually come to the table and end the strike. Fingers crossed.