A conceptual illustration of streaming services as a tall building featuring logos like HBO Max and Disney+. People interact with coins, chains, and glowing lines under a starry sky with floating icons and a 'Prosperity' wheel.

The streaming wars were largely recognized to have ended in 2022, as the major streaming services lost subscribers and shifted their focus to profit over market share by raising subscription fees, cutting production budgets, cracking down on password sharing, and introducing ad-supported tiers.[81] HBO Max made a substantial cut to its library in August 2022, mostly to its children's television series, out of concerns that the quantity of content on the service (especially with its pending merger with Discovery+) was becoming overwhelming and difficult to find, and that the children's programming was not driving subscriptions or views on the service.[82] By the summer of 2023, other major streaming providers had begun to remove short-lived series from their catalogues and make them unavailable afterwards, something that had previously been a rare occurrence; this was particularly true of Disney+ (Disney had historically followed a similar model with physical media, known as the Disney Vault, which it had initially suspended in the early months of Disney+[83]) and Paramount+.[84] This also coincided with an increased emphasis on business models that draw revenue from both advertising and subscriptions, prompting streaming providers to focus on productions that have mass appeal while also reducing investment in high-risk projects targeting niche audiences.[85] The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath saw major reductions in the workforce and cancellations of multiple See more