Disney+ subscribers will be allowed to share their accounts with other users – for now – although the media giant has said it will be monitoring password sharing very closely and will be cracking down on subscribers if things get too out of hand.
Currently, Disney+ allows four concurrent streams and up to seven user profiles per account, which is quite generous in comparison to other streaming services.
During a Disney+ media preview, Michael Paull, President of Disney Streaming Services, said that Disney is already thinking about password sharing, but for now, Disney are not planning to prevent customer from taking advantage of it.
“Password sharing is definitely something we think about and Disney is hopeful that customers will recognise just how much they’re getting and use the service within reason,” Paull said.
“We believe that consumers will see the value, and they’re going to act accordingly. They’re going to use those accounts for their family, for their household. That being said, we do recognise password sharing exists and will continue to exist.”
Paull did warn though that if subscribers begin to abuse the account sharing aspect, then Disney will be ready to deal with it as they already have several tools in place to prevent this from happening.
“We have created some technology that’s in the backend that we will use to understand behaviour, and when we see behaviour that doesn’t make sense, we have mechanisms that we’ve put in place that will deal with it,” Paull explained.
Disney+ recently went live and was a mixed bag of a debut to say the least. Despite positive reviews given to brand new Star Wars spinoff series, The Mandalorian, several subscribers immediately encountered problems just trying to access the streaming service.
Several users turned to social media to complain about having trouble signing into Disney+, while others had problems accessing specific content or features.
Disney+ came out and blamed the issues on unexpected high demand for the streaming service.
“The consumer demand for Disney+ has exceeded our high expectations. We are working to quickly resolve the current user issue. We appreciate your patience,” Disney+ said on its customer help Twitter account.
The issue of account sharing has been a common gripe with many of the streaming services out there at the moment, with recent research stating that the industry loses billions of dollars from illegitimate sharing.
In light of this, companies like Netflix and HBO have been working hard to try and crack down on these issues, with many others following suit to curb this practice.
