Is this needed?

Can anyone advise, is this an integral part of a DVD player? My 1 year old seems to think so.

My wife managed to break the DVD player even more before I got home while she did her brand of repair, involving a knife to try and lever the front of the DVD player open. It took me about 5 minutes to repair the jamming player by removing the offending petrol pumps from it but it’s still missing the front cover due to my wifes “repair”