You may have noticed Amazon’s Prime Video now includes ads, but that’s not the only change. The default ad-supported tier no longer supports Amazon’s Watch Party feature either. Instead, Prime members and Prime Video subscribers now have to pay extra for the ad-free upgrade to unlock Watch Party support once again.
Similar to other services, Amazon launched its Watch Party feature during the pandemic, as a way for people to quickly and easily watch content remotely with friends and family. Even more recently, Amazon introduced ads to Prime Video, along with the option to upgrade to ad-free for an additional $2.99 a month.
In addition to unlocking the ads, the new ad-free tier also unlocks access to Watch Party again. As a result, anyone attempting to start a Watch Party on the ad-supported plan will now find that they can’t. Streaming Better can confirm Watch Party no longer works on any device that’s attempting to start one from an ad-supported Prime Video account.
While Amazon hasn’t officially announced this change yet, it has started updating some documentation to confirm that the Watch Party host account must be upgraded to ad-free.
“The host must have the Prime Video Ad Free upgrade in order to start a Watch Party on content that is included with an Amazon Prime membership.”
Based on this information, and the general way in which Watch Party works, it would appear that only the host account needs to be upgraded to ad-free. In other words, those joining a Watch Party should still be able to watch from an ad-supported Prime Video subscription.
For reference, Streaming Better also recently confirmed how the ad-free upgrade doesn’t work across accounts linked through Amazon Household. Instead, each individual linked account now needs to pay for the $2.99/month upgrade to get access to ad-free Prime Video.
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