Rakuten Viki announced today a new feature that allows users to host a private Watch Party for friends and family. The update comes after the streaming service launched a public watch party feature this summer.
With the new feature, users can now host their own private Watch Party and join other Watch Parties for free using a unique link provided by the host. Currently, private Watch Party only works with select movies and the first episodes of drama series. Once a Watch Party starts, users can interact with friends and members of the community via chat. While the feature is limited for now, Watch Party will expand to include all drama episodes, more features, and increased availability.
“Our viewers come to Rakuten Viki not only because of the wide variety of TV shows, movies, and other kinds of enjoyable content, but because they also feel like they are part of a community,” said Cathy Chang, vice president of Product at Rakuten Viki. “They like to discover programs together, give each other recommendations, and help make the programs accessible to even more people by helping to create subtitles in many different languages. The new Watch Party feature is an extension of this community Rakuten Viki users have already been building themselves. It’s another way for us to bring our community together to engage conversations with each other, especially in the midst of the pandemic, and we are so glad that we can offer this to them.”
Along with the new private Watch Party feature, Rakuten Viki is also scheduling more community-wide Watch Party events including a Halloween celebration at the end of the month with a Watch Party for The Wailing and Rampant.
Rakuten Viki has a collection of over 1400 TV shows and movies from Korea, Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, and Thailand. The service has a free ad-supported tier, a Standard Pass for $4.99/month, and a Plus Pass for $9.99/month.
Watch on Roku, Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, Android and iOS, and use the Watch Party feature on Viki.com.