Disney+ just nuked the group watch feature (original) (raw)
- The 2025 Games of the Year results are in! Thank you to everyone that took the time to vote, and congratulations to all the winners! ...last notification about this, promise.
Disney+ just nuked the group watch feature
- Thread starter Kinthey
- Start date Sep 21, 2023
- Entertainment
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
The once-handy tool allowed streamers to watch any title in the Disney Plus library virtually with friends and family, automatically syncing their devices so that everyone in a group could watch together.
The GroupWatch feature was originally launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and allowed people to still be able to watch movies with their friends and family whilst adhering to social distancing rules. However, as of late, there is no trace of the feature on the website.
ComicBook found this notice on the Disney Plus help center: "As of September 18, 2023, the GroupWatch feature will no longer be available on Disney+. We're always working to deliver the best product experience on Disney+, and as part of recent updates, the GroupWatch feature was removed."
Wow, talk about bullshit. Have been using this a lot to watch shows with my brother and all of the sudden its just gone. Cant really see a reason behind it either, the feature was complete and I doubt it took much maintenance
"We're always working to deliver the best product experience on Disney+, and as part of recent updates, the GroupWatch feature was removed."
That's doing the exact opposite of what your intending.
Anything can happen; you don't know how hard something is to maintain.. or even the potential for them finding some sort of vulnerability with the endpoints involved.
Never used this myself, but not sure why they'd remove it. Everyone still needs to be subscribed or signed in
Groupwatch wasn't even good to use, also it's funny this was nuked to prevent PW sharing when the feature only worked if you and the people in the group also had + accounts.
Buried alongside the party mode for 360 Netflix
"We're always working to deliver the best product experience on Disney+, and as part of recent updates, the GroupWatch feature was removed."
That's doing the exact opposite of what your intending.
I swear, as convenient as this streaming era is considering we do have hours upon hours of highly produced content at the palm of our hands, this experience continues to only get worse. Whether it's removing a ton of shows, movies or features, it all sucks cause we continue to lose more as these services charge more.
Never used it on Disney+, but when my partner had covid we isolated from each other in the house and used the Plex group watch feature for our local content. It was great.
Never used this myself, but not sure why they'd remove it. Everyone still needs to be subscribed or signed in
You'd think it would even be a reason for people to have to have their own subscriptions instead of sharing.
"We're always working to deliver the best product experience on Disney+, and as part of recent updates, the GroupWatch feature was removed."
That's doing the exact opposite of what your intending.
The best experience for me is you paying me.
I went on a journey reading this. "What did they nuke--oh shit that sounds like it would be really fun and -- oh right I'm finding out about this as they nuked it."
Deleted member 151830
every company just slowly following in niantic's footsteps: remove any cool and interesting features you added during the lockdowns and quarantines, those are getting in the way of selling more things
I actually used this feature so this sucks....
I use this to watch movies with my wife when we're sitting in the office together. Literally used it to watch Elemental a few nights ago. Boo!
When you look back, all these tech companies (facebook, instagram, twitter, etc) reached a peak, the kept fudging with things that worked and are now a shadow of what they used to be at their best - though at the time, we had no idea they were at their best, and that they would devolve so much. Same with all these streaming platforms - especially with music - enjoy your music streaming now, because I think they will hobble that more and more in the coming years.
some dumb shit. guess who can still group-watch? people who don't pay.
making piracy more convenient than the product you sell sure is a business model.
Wow, talk about bullshit. Have been using this a lot to watch shows with my brother and all of the sudden its just gone. Cant really see a reason behind it either, the feature was complete and I doubt it took much maintenance
Yeah thats crappy. I do know apple had a built in SharePlay feature that I think could work but idk if android based devices also had an equivalent over a call which is the only reason I could see the scrapping their own version of it.
"We're always working to deliver the best product experience"
*kills one of the best features of said product* 🤡
Damn that's a shame because like... I assume this just affects kids watching Disney+ the most.
"Children, gather round while I teach you the software development principle of sunk cost fallacy."
So to use this you had to have your own Disney+? In that case we're just making a service worse for no reason.
I've never gotten this feature to work on any service that offers it since most of the time I want to watch with people in different countries. There's always a rights restriction, even when the streamer holds rights in both countries. It's a real shame.
We're always working to deliver the best product experience on Disney+, and as part of recent updates, the GroupWatch feature was removed
Ah yes, the Elon Musk method of "making things better."
Xbox 360 Netflix users experienced this pain a longtime ago.
Yep, noticed yesterday when trying to watch Ahsoka with a friend. Love paying the same for less features /s
I used this with a friend to watch The Mandalorian. It was great. Real shame to see it removed as it worked well too.
Nuked group watch, but maybe they have a live stream feature coming up! Imagine, a new movie premiere dropping at exactly the same time for everyone! I thought it was wack that when Marvel was doing the watch parties with the Russo's years ago, they said "Ok everyone press play, NOW!" why can't Disney just sync the time for everyone...
Deleted member 26964
Wow, talk about bullshit. Have been using this a lot to watch shows with my brother and all of the sudden its just gone. Cant really see a reason behind it either, the feature was complete and I doubt it took much maintenance
They're about to introduce policy for preventing folks sharing passwords - that's bound to be part of the logic for this.
This sucks cause I used this feature like a lot with my partner
"We're always working to deliver the best product experience on Disney+, and as part of recent updates, the GroupWatch feature was removed"
'We're making this worse for your benefit, actually'
You know if they said this was kind of difficult or took up a lot of backend resources I could understand that. But just to pull it is weird. I used this a lot.
Upping the prices while removing features, lmaoooo
Fuzzy
Completely non-threatening
Nuked group watch, but maybe they have a live stream feature coming up! Imagine, a new movie premiere dropping at exactly the same time for everyone! I thought it was wack that when Marvel was doing the watch parties with the Russo's years ago, they said "Ok everyone press play, NOW!" why can't Disney just sync the time for everyone...
They can and have already had live events on Disney+.
I never understood this feature... Are you guys on facetime or something while watching the movie as well? I don't get the purpose...
I never understood this feature... Are you guys on facetime or something while watching the movie as well? I don't get the purpose...
Discord. Able to chat with friends while at the same point of the movie.
So....is there any service out there that allows you to screenshare a stream? All the normal ones I know of block that from happening. I just want to be able to watch stuff with my kid in college.
It never worked well tbh on apps... for me anyway
I tried it a few tears ago and it sucked and never synced I just gave up and we did the 321 play thing
Shona
Unshakable Resolve - Prophet of Truth
I never understood this feature... Are you guys on facetime or something while watching the movie as well? I don't get the purpose...
My friend group is scattered across the world, so being able to chill in Discord with a Plex / D+ / whatever tab open is nice.
Never used this myself, but there must have been some kind of problem for them to need to remove it.
I'd imagine there are security flaws or potential compromises from the feature that necessitated it being taken down, that or it cost too much to maintain considering low levels of customer usage..
It'd be nice if business were more transparent in these kinds of situations, but you'll rarely find that.
This seems like a dumb feature to start with tbh.
You taking your eyes off the screen to text one another your live reactions or what? I'd save the texting for afterwards anyway in which case being a minute out of sync doesn't matter in the slightest lol.
I suppose with how often my ex and my sister etc sit on their phones during movies I can believe it though. Personally if I'm watching something my phone is down and out. Full concentration.
Why would i want to watch TV with other people.
(Seriously, how do you justify this? )
Why would i want to watch TV with other people.
(Seriously, how do you justify this? )
I'm extremely antisocial but come on.... really?
--
I wonder if they got rid of this because of features like Facetime SharePlay that do this natively and better? I tried using group watch and the netflix version before and sometimes we just couldn't get it to work.
Hilarious timing on this, my wife's away on a business trip next week and we'd talked about using this feature for the first time ever to watch Only Murders in the Building together. No big shakes but seems dumb to remove it
My friends and I used this to watch the first two Mandalorian seasons and text during it, no idea why you remove a feature like this
I never understood this feature... Are you guys on facetime or something while watching the movie as well? I don't get the purpose...
This seems like a dumb feature to start with tbh.
You taking your eyes off the screen to text one another your live reactions or what? I'd save the texting for afterwards anyway in which case being a minute out of sync doesn't matter in the slightest lol.
I suppose with how often my ex and my sister etc sit on their phones during movies I can believe it though. Personally if I'm watching something my phone is down and out. Full concentration.
Have people forgotten the pandemic already? This feature was an absolute godsend for me to stay connected with friends/family I couldn't physically see in person. We could watch a show together and message each other our reactions and have a small bit of normality during that time.
Also these shows are Marvel and Star Wars, its not like they require your full undivided attention at all times. If you take your eyes away from the screen for a few seconds, you're unlikely to miss anything important.
friend and I use this feature in plex sometimes, it's fun riffing on media together in discord