I’m not sure why this has me rankled today, but it does.

Per Deadline.com, in this morning’s quarterly stockholders call, Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke of future changes to the Disney+ streaming service, saying:

Since splashing out on an equity stake in Fortnite owner Epic Games for $1.5B last year, Iger said the opportunity is now there to “integrate game-like features into Disney+,” which would directly challenge streaming rival Netflix – a business that has leant hard into gaming of late.

“Obviously there is a huge opportunity for games and our investment with Epic Games, well that will largely be an opportunity to integrate game-like features into Disney+,” said Iger.

This is the absolute last thing I could want.

I don’t need “game-like features”. I have games for those. I subscribe to their service (yes, I came back after they fixed things up with Jimmy Kimmel) to watch things. Period.

Now, I recognize, that doesn’t sound great to stockholders. “The average user of Disney+ watches what they subscribed us for and moves on”. This is why they, like all streaming services, want to push you into automatically playing content, binging, following their suggestions, and so on. To be able to say that the average user was “engaged” (i.e. the app was on and showing something) for more minutes every quarter.

It’s not fun. It’s not entertaining. It’s not enjoyable. It’s cruft that makes me waste time.

Is it any wonder that people are flocking to using apps like Plex, Stremio, Infuse, and Kodi to just watch things? The more traction you put between me and what I’m intending, the less I want to use your service. “Engagement” minutes or not.