Ill-fated movie ticket subscription company MoviePass is the subject of a new editorial alleging that shady tactics took place behind closed doors.

Anonymous former MoviePass employees have claimed that among other things, the company had ordered that a small percentage of power users’ account passwords be changed so they couldn’t log into the app and order tickets.

MoviePass skyrocketed to attention with the launch of its entirely unsustainable $9.95/month subscription plan, which had at the time allowed customers to see a movie every single day of the month.

Though the plan succeeded in making the company viral, it also quickly drained its coffers, eventually resulting in an emergency loan and increasing restrictions.

According to Business Insider, which cites multiple unnamed alleged former MoviePass employees, the company engaged in questionable and controversial business tactics in an effort to stay afloat.

One of these alleged tactics, Business Insider claims, was ordering that the passwords of accounts belonging to a small number of power users be changed so they couldn’t order tickets.

In particular, the report highlights a strategy the company used to keep users from bankrupting it, by changing account passwords to prevent ticket purchases that might cost it money it didn’t have.

Business Insider’s report looks at how Ted Farnsworth, CEO of MoviePass parent company Helios & Matheson Analytics, and MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, transformed the company from a little-known subscription service to a nationwide sensation.

MoviePass has had an extremely rough couple of years, due in part to its buzzy $10-a-month fee it introduced back in the summer of 2017.

The change, which allowed subscribers to see a movie a day every day of the month for less than the price of an average ticket in most American cities, resulted in an explosion in popularity and exposure for MoviePass.

The report, however, outlines how the price drop was mainly a marketing tactic to generate headlines, and that it led to a surge in sign-ups the company could barely keep up with.

For example, MoviePass never anticipated the number of physical cards it needed, and its vendor ended up running out, leading to delays in on-boarding new users.

MoviePass, the $10-a-month movie subscription service that once dominated the industry, has been hit with financial issues that essentially brought an end to the company as we knew it.

Some of the ways it dealt with those issues included changing some users' passwords to keep them from ordering tickets, according to a Business Insider report this week.

Because MoviePass's business model essentially involved paying theaters the full price for customers' tickets, the company was quickly losing money, according to the report.

CEO Mitch Lowe reportedly became frustrated with subscribers who took advantage of the low monthly rate by going to the movies every day, and ordered the company limit subscriber access before the April 2018 release of Avengers: Infinity War.

Lowe called for the passwords for a "small percentage of power users be changed," which would keep them from going into the MoviePass app and ordering tickets, according to Business Insider.

By the end of July 2018, the company was losing around $40 million a month, and on July 26 it ran out of money to put on MoviePass cards, Business Insider says.

As expected, Microsoft has dumped the perpetually-licensed Office 2019 from its "Home Use Program" agreements with organizations that license the productivity software for the workplace.

Home Use Program (HUP) is one of the benefits provided by Software Assurance (SA), in turn either included with some Office licensing categories or optional with others.

Although SA may be best known for granting upgrade rights to the next version of a "perpetual" license – such as Office 2019 – it also is included with some subscription-based licensing of, for instance, Office 365 or its more inclusive big sister, Microsoft 365.

[ Further reading: Review: Office 2019 is the best advertisement yet for Office 365 ]

The idea: Let employees buy the same Office suite that they use at work, then run the suite on their home PC.

Employers liked the idea because it implicitly encouraged employees to work at home.