We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
Ehhh i don’t think that justifies having people pay to stream, i doubt a lot of people even ever used that functionality and yeah they could have just pay walled it if it was that much of a problem.
I don’t think it justifies putting remote streams as a whole behind a paywall. But I suspect that the feature is very widely used since it makes remote streams work out of the box regardless of your setup. It’s also turned on by default.