Somewhere in the middle of a screening, a name appears in chat next to a small bolt icon and a number: DEV_R beamed 10. A minute later, CARMEN beamed 500. That's a Beam — Multiplex's virtual currency, and the most direct way a guest can put real money behind a room while the room is still happening, rather than waiting for a tip jar link after the credits roll.
What a Beam actually is
A Beam is a unit of virtual currency you buy in bundles and spend inside rooms. Once you've topped up, sending Beams to a host takes no card, no confirmation dialog, no leaving the screening — you send it, and it shows up in the room's chat in real time, the same way a message would. It's built for the moment a host does something worth a reaction: a perfect needle drop, a room-wide gasp, a host talking the crowd through a scene they clearly love.
The bundles, and why bigger costs less per Beam
Beams sell in a handful of bundle sizes, and the rate improves as the bundle grows. A Starter bundle is 100 Beams for $1.40, working out to about 1.4 cents per Beam. A Popular bundle steps up to 500 Beams for $6.95. The Fan bundle — the best-value tier — gets you 1,500 Beams for $19.95, and a Superfan bundle tops out at 5,000 Beams for $64.40, the lowest per-Beam rate of the four. None of that pricing changes what a Beam is worth once it's sent; it only changes what it costs a guest to stock up.
What a host actually earns
This is the part worth understanding clearly: every Beam pays the host a flat rate, regardless of which bundle it came from. A Beam sent from a Starter bundle and a Beam sent from a Superfan bundle are worth exactly the same to the host who receives them. The bundle discount is a courtesy to guests who want to stock up, not a way to shortchange the host on the other end. A host watching Beams land in chat doesn't need to know or care which bundle a guest bought into — 500 Beams is 500 Beams.
Every Beam pays the host a flat rate, no matter what bundle it came from.
Where the money goes after that
Beam earnings don't sit in a separate account or run on a separate schedule. They land in the exact same weekly payout as tips, paid out every Friday, with nothing extra for a host to track, request, or reconcile. If you're already familiar with how tips move from a room into an account, Beams work the same way — they're just a second on-ramp for the same pipe, one built specifically for the moment when a guest wants to say something a chat message alone can't quite carry.
Why it works mid-screening
The whole design leans on timing. A tip jar link asks a guest to step outside the moment; a Beam asks nothing of the sort. It's sent from inside the room, shows up inside the room, and the host sees it without pausing anything. That's the actual value of Beams as a feature — not a new way to pay, but a way to pay that doesn't interrupt the thing you're paying for.