Sony customers are worried they’re about to lose shows from their Funimation digital libraries when the anime streaming service merges with Crunchyroll, not helped by Sony’s vague plan of giving “an appropriate value” for their erased digital copies.
The giant household name is currently struggling to appease customers’ concerns, after earlier this month it was announced by Funimation (owned by Sony) that all their customers’ accounts would become Crunchyroll accounts.
Which is not so bad in itself – it’s been on the cards since Sony acquired Crunchyroll in 2021 – but what customers didn’t expect was losing access to online copies of beloved anime they’d acquired via digital codes purchased in Funimation DVDs or Blu-rays.
For years, it’d been promised by Funimation that customers would own and be able to stream these copies “forever, but there are some restrictions.”
Crunchyroll’s president, Rahul Purini, recently spoke to The Verge‘s latest Decoder podcast about the decision, noting how the feature was integral to the Funimation platform. Here’s what they had to say:
As we look at usage of that and the number of people who were redeeming those and using them, it was just not a feature that was available in Crunchyroll and isn’t in our road map.
The executive went on to claim that Funimation is “working really hard directly” with every customer affected (which must be a lot) to “ensure that they have an appropriate value for what they got in the digital copy initially.”
When asked what “appropriate value” means, Purini responded:
It could be that they get access to a digital copy on any of the existing other services where they might be able to access it. It could be a discount access to our subscription service so they can get access to the same shows through our subscription service. So we are trying to make it right based on each user’s preference.
After saying this, apparently Purini confirmed this means Sony is prepared to provide affected customers with a new digital copy via a different streaming service. The company is currently handling subscribers’ requests on an individual basis when “they reach out to customer service”. Rrrrrright.
Seems a bit unfair to make it down to each customer to reach out.
It’s an interesting scenario to be in, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on this story, and how this potential solution is going to work in practice, as it develops further. In the meantime, I asked long-term subscriber and Geek Native founder, Girdy, what he thought of the situation:
I’ve had a Funimation account and didn’t even know I could “own” digital content. I would have scoffed at the claims the content would be mine forever, and I am surprised Sony put such a claim in writing with that sly “unless we remove it” get-out clause. Yet, that’s what Sony did; we’re now in this brand-tarnishing situation.
Crunchyroll might not be keen to recreate the digital library, but we need to know what Crunchyroll IS keen on doing, to find solace in their prioritisation. We’ve not seen much innovation from the platform’s tech, so the gotcha feels a bit mean, even though we appreciate that Netflix and Disney+ are ramping up the interest and costs.
Hmmm, thanks Girdy. I guess we’ll see what happens, but I think the main thing so far is that Sony’s plan seems extremely unclear and not particularly accessible.
Have you been affected by the Funimation/Crunchyroll merger – and have you reached out to Sony yet? Let me know in the comments, as it’d be interesting to hear from you.
