Disney Plus has been threatening to crackdown on password sharing for at least a year at this point. Even going so far as to declare that the crackdown would be kicking off properly last September (in Canada), this February, and then again in June. Now Disney has announced that the crackdown would be starting “in earnest” from September.
This news was announced by CEO Bob Iger in Disney’s latest earnings call (via The Verge) — though he didn’t provide any other details. That means there’s a solid chance you may be asked to stop sharing your Disney Plus password with your cousin or former roommate.
Though experience tells us that you should probably carry on as normal until Disney flags your account for sharing. You never know if this could be a false start or not.
A growing industry trend
Crackdowns on password sharing are happening across the streaming industry, as streamers try to start actually making a profit. So in addition to what seems like never-ending price hikes, it’s now significantly harder to split the cost of a subscription with multiple people. Netflix started off that trend, with Max and Disney going on to announce plans of their own in the aftermath — and news that the crackdown helped bolster Netflix’s finances.
The company is announcing these plans and seemingly doing nothing with it, only to announce a reinvigorated effort a few months later.
Disney is in an interesting position because it operates three streaming services, Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus. All of those services will be cracking down on password sharing, with users being given the option to pay for the privilege of adding new people to an account. That started rolling out in certain regions back in February, and Iger claims that the company has had “no backlash to the [paid sharing] notifications”.
The reception will obviously depend on whether people actually see those notifications, though. If the password-sharing crackdown still hasn’t actually kicked off “in earnest” then it’s not going to affect a large amount of people. This is the main problem I have with Disney’s password-sharing crackdown. The company is announcing these plans and seemingly doing nothing with it, only to announce a reinvigorated effort a few months later.
So if you’re going to do it, Disney, please follow through and actually do it. The constant timeline shifting and general lack of communication is confusing at best, and really quite annoying to keep hearing about.
