Netflix’s ad-supported tier might arrive with another drawback – no offline downloads

If Netflix introduces a new ad-supported tier, and all signs suggest it will, it’ll have a few drawbacks. One of these is less content, according to previous reports. The other, obvious, one is that it’ll contain ads. Turns out, there’s a third one.

Ad-bolstered Netflix might yank a very useful feature out of the app, according to hints in the app’s code. Developer Steve Moser spotted the change when poking around in the app. It seems that downloads will be “…available on all plans except Netflix with ads”.

Netflix cheap folks in the ‘nads

The text Moser found in the company’s app suggests that the new ad-supported tier will be called ‘Netflix with ads’. Which is descriptive, at least. It’ll also subtly mark those on the (so far) free plan as being somehow inferior to paid users. There’s a little customer motivation in that, we suppose.

But canning offline downloads for its free plan might not be the best idea, especially for a country like South Africa. Those interested in ad-supported Netflix in SA are also the most likely to require downloads. Take your device to the office, take advantage of WiFi someone else is paying for, and stream when the lights are off. The whole country knows the drill by this point.

Removing the feature makes a kind of sense for the company. It doesn’t want to make life too comfortable for its non-paying customers, or those with subscriptions might downgrade. The added boost of advertising revenue probably won’t offset that sort of migration.

But, unlike Disney+, the Netflix ad-supported package has yet to launch. It’ll most likely turn up in the States first, around the beginning of next year, according to Moser. It’ll probably first appear in countries where the service is more or less saturated. Netflix with ads might take a little while to make its way to South Africa as a result.