If you want to watch movies with your friends remotely, Amazon Prime isn't the place anymore. The streaming giant has quietly removed the Watch Party feature, according to discussions on Reddit.
Amazon didn't make a public announcement about the feature getting scrapped and it's hard to confirm when it started phasing out Watch Party. However, the company has acknowledged the move in several support pages, although, some support pages related to Watch Party are no longer available.
One of the support pages reads:
Please be aware that the option to create a Prime Video Watch Party is no longer available. If you have a link to an active Watch Party, you can participate in that Watch Party until the link expires.
In addition, a Reddit user previously confirmed from Amazon customer support that the feature was no longer available.
For those who don't know, Watch Party was launched in 2020 (after Twitch Watch Parties) to offer a co-watching experience to the viewers. At the time, most of the world was confined to their homes due to the pandemic and the internet was one of the few ways to communicate with friends and family.
As the name suggests, Watch Party's job was to play movies and TV shows in sync on users' devices. It also had a chat feature to let participants communicate while watching content.
While the feature itself was free to use, it only worked for those who had an Amazon Prime or Prime Video subscription. Up to 100 users were allowed to join a watch party on various platforms, including Fire TV, Android, iOS, and desktop browsers (except Safari).
That time is gone now, but still, people living far away from each other might want to watch movies together on Prime Video. There are alternatives such as Teleparty (previously Netflix Party) that lets you co-watch not just Prime Video but other streaming services such as Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, and more.
Other than that, Apple's SharePlay feature introduced with iOS 15 also lets you co-watch movies and TV shows while connecting over FaceTime. It supports Apple TV+ and several other services, including YouTube Premium, TikTok, Hulu, Disney+, and more.
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