After Netflix, Disney+ is in turn tackling account sharing, by prohibiting the use of a subscription outside the home from spring 2024. A way to replenish its coffers, while the service is not yet profitable.
We suspected it, but this time, here it is: Disney++ is starting to take measures to enforce the end of account sharing! Last summer, the family entertainment giant clearly expressed its wish to fight against this practice, while subscribers received emails in September 2023 notifying them of changes made to the user contract for its streaming platform, which includes of the “restrictions on account sharing”. “Unless permitted by your subscription offer, you cannot share your subscription outside of your household. By household, we mean all the devices associated with your main personal residence and which are used by people who reside there”we can read in the French contract.
It clearly indicates that the service has the means to analyze the activity of its users. And the firm is not joking, because “if we determine that you have violated this Agreement, we may restrict or terminate access to the Service” ! The agreement also states that the new rules will apply to all subscribers “unless otherwise authorized by your service level”. Enough to leave the door open to a new, more expensive offer that would allow account sharing, a bit like what Netflix did? According to information from CNNwho had access to a series of emails sent by the company to Hulu subscribers – part of the Disney+ offer in the United States – measures will be taken to prevent access outside the home from March 14.
Disney+ account sharing: soon to be over, like at Netflix?
Long feared, the end of account sharing for Netflix subscribers was a real tremor in the world of streaming. This practice, although very popular, is more than ever on the rise, with the proliferation of SVODs and significant increases in prices. The Red N strategy was risky because such a policy change could have caused many customers to leave.
Ultimately, the opposite happened, and six million new users finally decided to take out a new subscription between April and June 2023, which is much more than the departures. And that’s without counting the users who agreed to pay the additional €5.99 to add a member from outside the household to already existing accounts! This obviously gave ideas to some of its competitors since, almost three months after Netflix, i.e. at the beginning of August 2023, Disney+ was preparing to test a restriction on account sharing in India, as reported by the British press agency. Reuters.
Disney+ account sharing: a way to replenish the coffers
Concretely, the general conditions of use, or CGU, have been modified on the American platform in order to include a mention explaining that subscribers “will agree not to usurp or distort [son] affiliation with any person or entity, including using another person’s username, password or other account information, or the name or likeness of another person, or providing false details about a parent or guardian.” We do not know if Disney + will offer, like Netflix, paying a monthly supplement to share your account with a user who is not in their household.
If these future sharing restrictions do not concern France for the moment, there is no doubt that we will be entitled to them subsequently – as well as the rest of the world – once the company has validated the test results and found the best method to apply. Especially since the platform needs to replenish its coffers. Indeed, after having invested generously in the production of original series and films – in particular for Star Wars and the Marvel universe – the big-eared company must confront profitability issues. And this is not the first time that she has looked towards Netflix to find the solution. Last November, it launched in France the Standard formula with advertising, a subscription partly financed by advertising, and increased its prices (see our article).