Subscribers to Disney Plus beware — Disney plans on cracking down on password sharing for the popular streaming service sometime in June.
Coming off the heels of an intense proxy fight with investor Nelson Peltz to retain his seat on the Walt Disney Company’s board of directors, Bob Iger has revealed plans to begin cracking down on password sharing among Disney Plus account holders. There will be an initial rollout in a few countries, but according to an article by Android Authority, all markets will have the policy applicable come September.
The move to switch over to a new password model was announced earlier this February, with emails sent to account holders detailing changes to Disney Plus’s terms of service. Included in these updated terms of service is a clause about the use of the account details with those outside of an account holder’s immediate family, as well as a monitoring of activity to ensure that this information is kept that way.
As is well known among disgruntled cinemaholics and group watchers alike, Disney Plus isn’t the only streaming service that has a tight grip on how their accounts are used. Netflix was the first to really bring down the hammer with password sharing, and due to the noticeable rise in subscriptions that they’d gotten since doing so, it looks like Disney is eager to bring in that same growth.
In contrast to the optimistic outlook that the service provider has about stricter account restrictions, there is a discourse among consumers about this decision. There is worry about the level of inflexibility this has for people whose accounts here at Elizabethtown College’s student body, opinions are harsh in regard to this upcoming change.
“I don’t really understand the necessity to crack down on passwords when you’re already a billion-dollar company,” biochemistry and molecular biology dual-major Amelia Ingersoll said. “They’re just trying to milk people for more money because they found that Netflix didn’t tank when they did the same thing.”
A motivating factor behind Disney’s decision to limit password sharing is likely to make up for profit losses in recent years following the company’s head-long dive into the streaming service market. According to Iger in an interview with CNBC, they were losing up to $4 billion per year during Bob Chapek’s stint as CEO — a motivating factor for Iger’s return to assume control of the company again — and that there needed to be a massive overhaul in order to make the company profitable again.
“I think that as of recent, Disney’s former big hitting studios aren’t doing as well and the money they were earning when they first bought those studios just isn’t enough,” Ingersoll said. “I think that their streaming is a way to earn back their financial losses from their most recent project failures.”
Regardless of customer concerns, Disney is still planning on continuing this rollout in June, hoping to overhaul their current streaming and content plan in order to maximize product quality and increase their financial gains.
