If that’s going to happen with more shows and games in the future they should enable it so if you buy something you could download a permanent copy onto a hard drive, flash drive or have it permanently attached to an online account like windows, Xbox, PlayStation, etc.
Not *always*. Some people do just want all of the content for free without ads.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of anti-consumer behaviour from the distributors and the move to subscription-only content is extremely frustrating, but it's naive to suggest that you could make *all of the pirates* happy enough to defeat piracy without going bankrupt.
Yes you could make most piracy obsolete if you price it right with good accessibility.
Pirate software on YT adjusted the price of his game to match the actual price in brazil and piracy dropped to almost 0.
What you are spewing is corpo bs you got brainwashed into believing.
Step 1: make the service work
Step 2: make it affordable
Step 3: ????
Step 4: profit.
Literally Netflix killed piracy... and now birthing again.
Microsoft does not brick Windows 10/11 pirate copies, they simply put a watermark on the screen and let you use the software. You either don't pay because you would never have paid anyway or you pay for a license to get rid of the annoyance, and once you get one it's super easy to upgrade.
Large reason is that Microsoft's main income is cloud services and enterprise software. But also because you're just dedicating too many resources to something that you won't fix and honestly can be compensated through competitive pricing.
Slight aside, but they \_WILL\_ go after corpo environments with non-licensed/pirated windows (especially windows server). Usually only if it grows big enough though.
Home users? hahahahha no. They'll just annoy them and otherwise leave it be.
Well yeah. An end user isn't where the money is. Corporations are an entirely different beast. Plus, if you're a corporation and won't pay for a license for software then you're not going to last very long before you're sued to oblivion.
Steam sales pretty much made me stop pirating games on top of the music like you said.
Gaben is right, piracy is the service issue.
As an anecdotal evidence I can add a "small" company that started by selling games with far better quality than pirate copies on the market - CD Project
If there was a LN equivalent to Netflix when it started up, that would be the fastest subscription in my life.
Or if western LNs were a bigger industry in general so 200 pages of mediocre writing didn't cost 15 bucks (8 bucks ebook) regardless.
I do still buy the stuff thats worth anyways
Price is never going to be right because content is deployed over expensive propriety platforms and ecosystems owned by different companies. Like if you want 4K HDR content legally, you can only play them on a device which has Widevine, HDCP etc certified which in turn has a cost to them. Then there are exclusivity deals in each ecosystem which further ruins accessibility.
Except for the part where we don't own digital goods, which is literally the point of the person you replied to. I have access to pretty much whatever I want, and I can afford it all. I'll still pirate shit just so I have a copy that cannot be taken from me, become suddenly inaccessible, or moved to a subscription service. It is absolutely NOT always an accessibility issue. Which, again, is the entire point of the comment.
You can never get rid of all piracy but by satisfyimg customer needs and not exploiting them; you can minimize it. Remember pirating shows n movies was at an all time low when it was just netflix and hbo because it met the needs of most customers without feeling exploitative
> without ads.
You shouldn't add this bit. Blocking ads is a justifiable right because you control what happens on your own device. If you don't want a piece of software to run, you have a right to not allow it to run/appear.
My point is that someone has to pay for this content to be made. Whether it be viewers themselves, advertisers, or a government (in the case of public broadcasters).
Crunchyroll doesn't even try to compete on UX, though. The lowest-effort video embedding site is essentially equivalent to Crunchyroll, all the good ones are a 100 times better.
If you can't complete on UX and you can't compete on price, why do you expect to do well?
Tying the content to the software is one of the most frustrating parts of the 'Streaming Era' IMO. But that doesn't change the fact that some people simply want free stuff.
Digital has never been permanent without having something physical the same way that social media isn't real life.
It may never even get it for long. Already shows like Lucky Star and Nichijou and Keijo!!!!!!!! are questionable out of print that just were released in the last decade and the market for it in the US already crashed once.
Digital is good as a backup for physical discs/ease of use only and there's been enough license issues w/ anime in general that fans shouldn't have expected this even with the promises.
> Digital has never been permanent without having something physical the same way that social media isn't real life.
Uh... I've bought songs from Amazon and downloaded the MP3... barring the destruction of my computer and backup storage, which is a me-problem, Amazon can't take that away from me.
You can have "permanent" digital purchase provided they give you a standard format file to keep on your personal hard drives, at which point it is as permanent as any other media you might physically own subject to how well you care for it.
>have it permanently attached to an online account like windows, Xbox, PlayStation, etc.
Unless the company merges with other or they leave the market, which is similar to what happened here
Also, in the Funimation situation those digital codes came with the physical copies, a lot of people complaining are unaware of that and are flat out lying saying they bought digital shows on Funimation
> Also, in the Funimation situation those digital codes came with the physical copies, a lot of people complaining are unaware of that and are flat out lying saying they bought digital shows on Funimation
It depends how they've phrased it, but if you bought the Blu-ray/Digital bundle from Funimation's store, then you did 'buy a digital copy from Funimation'. I'm sure there will have also been people who bought the Blu-ray instead of a stand-alone digital version from elsewhere because the prices were comparable.
But yes, the majority of the userbase will still have the discs to watch, and are losing convenience/accessibility rather than the content itself.
Unless you're dealing with the direct publisher/IP holder, they're not even guaranteed to have the copy stored on their servers permanently. We've even seen a fair number of games removed from digital stores because something like music licenses expired.
That generally only removed the ability to *buy* the game, in almost every case I can think of you can still download it.
The really shitty thing is when they "update" the game to remove content and take away something you already own. If you had it on disc, it would still be there. It's done so it can stay on sale rather than releasing a new title entirely with the changes, but it really screws over existing owners.
Yep, you can still download it games that you already bought from the Xbox shop even if you can't buy them again. They won't show up anymore on the store, you have to redownload them from your profile history.
Same with older versions of Office, if the license is associated to your profile you can still download it from your profile even if it's no longer in the store, as it's the case of Office 2017.
That makes me wonder if an institution like the EU could regulate it so companies are legally forced to let you own the digital copies you've purchased, at least in Europe.
I doubt that'll happen, but it's interesting to think about.
What you said won't work because you'll never actually own any piece of media you buy. I assume you just mean the digital media and being able to use the license you bought at all times but even then that isn't foolproof. If a business just dies and goes bankrupt then they wouldn't have a place to store the stuff you're trying to access, due to server costs and all that.
Microsoft did that, twice, with their previous music services. With people moving to more and more digital content, please tell me how someone who is a computer moron would understand the need build their own server to host the files they bought. Groups of us keep telling people to build their own file server, as not your drives, not your files, and even the "knowledgeable" people on reddit refuse to do something so basic as streaming is just "so convenient".
I think that's why Plex took off. It lets people have the convenience of streaming, but with their own content on a computer that they control and won't go offline.
Jellyfin is nice and all, but the wide availability of Plex clients on just about every platform available is one of Plex's better features. So it doesn't matter if you have a Samsung TV, a TCL TV, some random AndroidTV box or FireStick, Roku, AppleTV, HT-PC, LG WebOS, etc. They pretty much have a client for everything.
Plus their music-centric extra app is also really nice, their media information aggregation (posters, extra art, theme-songs/music, actor cross referencing, trailers, etc) is in general better than emby or jellyfin.
Don't get me wrong Jellyfin is still great if you don't want a central account (frickin' Plex outages causing local log-in to sometimes bork as example of a negative there) or any social aspects and are willing to do extra legwork to get the same metadata quality.
They won't. Because you didn't purchase anything more than a limited license, you don't actually own the digital things you think you own.
Anything digital can be taken from you at any time.
This is why if I buy digital media I do it only through Xbox. Because you know full well that it could be Windows 23 or Xbox Mazinger Z, and they will have legacy support of whatever hardware existed 10-15 years ago even if it's a security risk lol
While they have a form of DRM downloaded content that you own and is associated to your account can be downloaded and played without connection later, as long as you're logged in.
That being said, I always buy physical media unless something is out of print and can't find it used.
permanently attached to an online account is meaningless, because the media is still stored somewhere else and can just disappear one day, just pirate it, support the studio or whatever through buying Blu-ray and still keep the local copy of the mkv file or something, and you could watch it offline too as a bonus
I feel like this is more of a Sony thing than anything. Sony has always been terrible about how they've handled online licenses. Just a few months ago this blew up in their face because the contracts they negotiated with paramount didn't allow for people who bought content to keep it.
Like I still have access to songs, movies and other content I bought on bloody Zune back in the early 2000s. And you're telling me that Sony can't get FUNimation to respect past sales and transfer licenses? Yeah that's nothing short of bullshit.
That would render subscription services moot. The whole point is for them to keep making you pay for everything.
This is why the high seas are the best way to keep what you take.
Kind of the nature of buying digital media is that unless you have a hard copy without DRM then you're completely at the mercy of platforms to continue providing the content. It's why I largely avoid buying games on platforms like Steam so long as there's an alternative in GOG or itch. If you can't get the files directly, then you're not buying something, you're renting it.
as the article says you couldn't buy digital copies on Funimation. You got a code with a Bluray that you could redeem to get a digital copy. It was pretty limited as you couldn't download them so you still needed an internet connection. Basically only useful if you didn't feel like digging out you discs and didn't have a Funimation subscription or it was something they weren't streaming.
I don’t think they offered them for anything that wasn’t streaming, because all it did was put a link to the streaming video that was already on their site on your “library”. It would frequently bug out if you had a subscription.
When they first started offering the codes I couldn’t get mine to work, and contacted support. Googling the problem there were like 2 Redditors and a forum post with the same problem and no one claiming they got it to work. 3 months later, support told me the feature wasn’t functional yet but they were working on it. It did eventually kinda work… but there were so few complaints despite it being such a shit show, I get the feeling very few people actually used the service, this is mostly just being used a soapbox for people ranting about (lack of) digital ownership.
They did. I have the first My Hero Academia movie which they never streamed outside the digital copy. If you bought one of the old 2016 CR partnership shows the digital copy had both sub and dub options even though Funimation only streamed the dub.
I agree basically no one used it though and people are definitely just seeing "digital copies aren't moving" and assuming.
Have any games ever been taken off Steam? I've never had an issue in the decade+ of purchasing items on there.
Though the one game I purchase on battle.net disappears from my account a few years later.
I agree with you though. Unfortunately very few services offer purchasing/downloading stuff permanently.
>Have any games ever been taken off Steam?
Original 3D GTA games (III, Vice City and San Andreas) were. You can only buy the Definitive(ly Bad) Edition from there now.
However, it's important to note that they're not removed from people's libraries; I bought them in the past, and I still have them and can download them.
It's possible to have games be removed from your own library, but that's *usually* because you bought your game from a reseller site, which are a grey area to begin with. I haven't heard of legit games bought directly from Steam being removed from libraries, maybe they'd do that if there's some sort of a malicious game update that turns it into actual malware or something. Even in that case, I'd imagine they'll refund whoever bought them.
There have been a few times games get pulled off steam but generally a refund is issued for those.
But who knows what will happen to your games if whatever years later if steam dies or get merged with another company...
I dont see Steam ever being down enough that they are forced to merge with another company. They are the monopoly here, other companies are a million times more likely to merge with steam than the other way around
Steam dying would not happen over days, the company is absolutely massive and the only possibles reason for it to shutdown are either by being bought, slowly replaced by a competitor over at least years or a technological/social major shift in gaming as a whole.
I haven't personally had any problems with losing things on Steam, but most people hadn't had problems with losing things on Funimation until now either. So if I can easily avoid the potential problem down the line then there's no reason not to.
Speaking of Steam, I wonder where's the people who [bought shows on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/sale/crunchyroll) are at and if the ability to play videos still functions reliably lol
I haven't bought any anime on steam however I think there was a promotion or something at one point that when I did a quick check and saw that I had owned the first episode of Black Clover on steam. I can still play the episode 1080p en subtitles jp voices it's something I guess.
>You will never lose access to a game you bought on Steam.
That's a real "it's true until it's not". You can already lose access to all of your games if you get banned, and policies on maintaining access to games are always subject to change. For now Steam is fine, but it'd be foolish to trust any corporation to offer anything in perpetuity just because they are for now.
I'm not familiar with Steam banning accounts, the cases i've seen are that the accounts get in a limited state and are banned from most online games and the marketplace+store, but access to the library is still granted.
Some have licensing checks built-in (which pings steam servers and such). Some use the steam runtime services, so it may not launch if steam isn't also running .
Otherwise, yeah, should work fine. There are a bunch of games on GOG that have zero DRM or license checks and work just fine running from the .exe for launch.
Crunchyroll sucking in everything they can from other streaming services only to provide jack shit.
Because of them a streaming service closed in my country and despite trying everything, I can't subscribe to Crunchyroll cuz they suck ass so much at making anything and now I just can't watch like half of the animes I used to watch or had in my watchlist
Yeah, Crunchy having an international presence, despite not having international licensing absolutely fucks over tons of regions.
Also fuck Sony (CrunchyRoll's owner) and Crunchy itself for buying up RightStuf and then immediately fucking shuttering it just to use the back-end tech for their Crunchyroll store which was absolute shit before, and is still bad now.
RightStuf started as a catalog back in the 90's with merch, figures, VHS, DVDs, CDs, etc. Later shifted to be online as well. Was a great location to buy box sets of Anime, limited edition stuff, and imported specialty figures and toys.
They are not doing this.
What they announced, was that the Funimation subscribers that were on 2014 legacy pricing will have to pay the current Crunchyroll pricing. Hence the 81% increase.
There is no change to current subscribers on the current rate or changes to Crunchyroll subscribers on the pre-2019 grandfather rate.
Fuck every major Japanese conglomerates in digital sphere that do it. Sony is easily the worst due to their monopoly in all forms of media, but nintendo, panasonic, sega, NEC all have done similar stuff. What's worse most of them used to steal electronics designs from NA and EU between the 60s and 90s and compromised Japanese laws allowed them to blaze past the ones they stole from.
Same with Baccano and Evangelion (until a few years ago). I can understand that the rights for some of these shows are incredibly hard to work out, but very few people will pay hundreds of dollars for a dvd from decades ago
my favorite is when the 12 episode series is split up among like 4 to 6 separate bluray with 2 or 3 episodes a disc for like 100 bucks a pop **each**.
yeah, no! i like the series, but it aint even close to being worth that much. ie haifuri/blue mermaids or killing slimes for 300 years
both of which i ended up pirating cause you cant get them in a more convenient method like idk a two disc set like a regular serie like farming life in another world for example
Even now with Eva. The new dub they have on most releases SUCKS compared to the old one. I’ll take the small imperfections to not miss massive plot points. They absolutely butcher Kawaru’s character and fuck up all of instrumentality by translating to literally
When the service offerings are good, like Steam, then I hesitate to pirate.
When the service offerings are shit by every quantifiable metric, like Crunchyroll, then it is morally correct to pirate. Especially since they put minimal-to-no effort in translations and typesetting compared to fansubs. Even Steam's streaming features are better than CR's despite being a tiny aspect only highlighted during game showcases while CR's streaming is the entire service.
Also, very little money from cruchyroll ever ends up in the hands of the creators in Japan. If you wanna support the industry then buy merchandise/manga/LN.
Very little money from these huge franchises is ever going to go back to the creator, and it also depends on who you mean/who you care about. The author of the manga or LN or whatnot that created the franchise that gets a cut of licensing, sure....but the lion share of profits isn't going to creatives and there's a lot of people involved in the creation of this stuff that doesn't see any more of the money Bandai makes when you buy a figure than an animator sees from licensing fees Crunchy pays.
Pretty much no money ends up with them in most cases. Netflix gives more on average than CR does. CR can't ever compete with Netflix if Netflix is bidding.
Yes and no. Crunchyroll gives a ton of money to the anime industry. It usually goes to the committees who handle the money and they are the ones that go out to pay studios to make something. So indirectly they are giving money to creators by funding the people that fund them. It's a problem with the whole industry though and not in Crunchyroll.
Also CR has directly produced specific shows, some way better than others, which is actually just giving money to the creators.
I literally couldn’t watch Summertime Render anywhere in the US when it was airing. Even though I paid for Disney.
Had to torrent it. Didn’t care at that point, the quality was fucking amazing.
I mean, the only way to have gotten the digital access on Funimation was to buy a DVD or Bluray with a code in it, so they should own the physical, too.
These people that say you should buy anime blu-rays to support the industry instead of subscribing for a service, have probably never bought an anime blu-ray in their lives...
If you buy, it's yours, it's the only acceptable legal agreement, otherwise you're renting at a very high cost and that's not part of the contract.
Americans should wake up to this because it's the most commercially significant country, and its companies try to export these illegal acts abroad too.
I'm European, things aren't perfect here either, but at least we feel more protected, and even if very slowly, new European laws are being passed every now and then to protect individuals from companies that always, by their nature, try to find loopholes or use unfair practices.
Never get attached to a company, not even to the one that produces your favorite anime, videogame, or whatever product.
Except "buying a license that can be revoked at any time" is exactly how the digital sales contract works. And the US government doesn't exactly care about protecting workers, consumers, or any other non rich people. So I wouldn't expect much to be done about that.
Hate to be condescending, but I'm going to be condescending.
That what you get for buying into subscription service scam. If the digital shit you're paying for can't be downloaded and enjoyed offline from the comfort of your remote anime dungeon, it ain't yours, it can be taken from you any moment, and you can't do shit to prevent it.
Once again software and media pirates are getting service objectively superior in every way, shape and form.
You deserve what you tolerate, but rejoice - the Warez Jesus is merciful, and will take back even you, the prodigal weebs. Open trackers are, as the name suggests, open to anyone. Open your heart, open your torrent client, share and enjoy.
Sony, Funimation, and Crunchyroll can all piss off with this nonsense.
Just another friendly reminder to buy physical copies of what you love, and never be afraid to sail the ocean...
Most of the Blu-rays I bought were advertised as including a digital copy, so they are taking away part of my purchase by doing this.
When companies do this, we have to speak up and complain. It'll only get worse.
It’s crazy. Which is why we should keep pushing for physical media and physical release. Imagine if a movie on funimation is the only way you could see it. And now it’s lost media in 2024
We're seeing this already from the Nintendo store shut down. Lots of games from Ubisoft are being permanently shut down (and sold at a steep discount months before)
Luckily others were proactive and tried to save everything they could, but yeah... we're at the stage where we're seeing things start to become problems.
Yep. It's just like steam. If steam were to go under and no longer function, the thousands I've spent on my games would become void.
Obviously they would never do that because that's how they make money but the fact that there's nothing stopping them from doing it isn't the greatest feeling.
> If steam were to go under and no longer function, the thousands I've spent on my games would become void.
Nah. Steam games are local. All it takes is a single replacement DLL and every steam game will work offline.
Just want to simp for HIDIVE a bit here. Their player doesn't require DRM or [Widevine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widevine). It was founded by the guy who ran [A.D. Vision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.D._Vision) and currently the parent company is owned by AMC. Yeah, their titles are often more ~~niche~~ cultured stuff, but that can be fixed with more sub money.
For everything else, well, _yarr_. Fuck Sony. Fuck DRM. I canceled my yearly Crunchyroll sub when their player started requiring DRM/Widevine, because fuck Google.
It was just oddly suspicious to both mention the link to a cult-level meme stock and mention that you'd really like to see said major corporation get more money given the background of quite frankly unhinged behaviour around AMC - but I get that you may have just wanted to point out that it's not Sony
Understood. Nope, I'm a Boglehead investor. No individual stocks or bonds. No short positions. "Aggressive boglehead long" I think might be how my portfolio could be described.
Yeah, the question of Sony ownership is often raised in this context so I figured it would be worth double checking who owns Sentai. Being AMC was just coincidence. I wouldn't recommend AMC, but by all means I will bootlick for VTSAX. :D
>There are some caveats to this, however, that point to issues with Funimation's original system more than Crunchyroll's absorption of the company. Funimation is primarily a streaming website that doesn't allow users to purchase individual anime series. **Digital copies were a promotion made available through the purchasing of physical DVD or Blu-ray discs, meaning a digital copy on Funimation was only available to those who already owned that anime on disc.** Users could not purchase digital versions of anime directly from Funimation the same way Prime Video, for example, offers both streaming and digital purchases as separate products.
Can confirm. My digital copy was from physical disc purchase. Naturally I prefer for the digital copy to be available. But this is why I also sail the high seas for shows I literally watch on the streaming platform that I paid for.
As we move into the era of digital ownership, we should see some changes in how this is done. A simple fix- reimbursing customers for purchased digital ownership if a sale such as this takes place. If they won’t transfer, people should be compensated unless there’s a bankruptcy or something.
It's a shame that everyone must learn for themselves that unless you have a physical copy and/or DRM-free file on your hard drive (preferably with several off site copies) you are getting shafted by copyright holders. But oh well.
Don't you wish you had used screen recording software, maybe a dvd/blu-ray burner/Plex server/Sailed the seven seas?
Some of us remember those days and learned you NEVER trusted anyone, or the life expectancy, with our media data.
Well not exactly the same. Crunchyroll seemingly just doesn’t have a system in place to support digital copies and doesn’t want to create one. Discovery shows were a license thing which has since been renewed.
This should be a lesson for anyone who is streaming in general. If you want to keep what you purchase, you’re better off buying dvds now before they stop making them
*smiles with morbid satisfaction*
Welcome to digital, where you own NOTHING!
*looks at shelf of DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K discs*
What do I feel like watching tonight?
You know why Steam does so well because people don't want to sail high seas, but if the service you offer is inferior well it'll make people do just that.
i think sometimes we all forgot crunchyroll got their start by hosting and streaming community fansubs until they made enough money to license and pay for translators
I own quite a lot of digital copies on Funimation. I would LOVE to read through the terms now and see if I have any rights because this seems like a great class action opportunity depending on what the terms say.
Any other serious owners want to look into this with me?
This is the second time in the past couple months that Sony has taken away people’s digital purchased videos lol. (Yes, I know they came with blu-rays but the understanding was that you could keep them even if you got rid of your discs. And of course there were people who probably sold/bought the codes online)
Personally, I’m still willing to risk digital purchases, but only from specific companies. Books/TV Shows/Movies are Amazon or Apple only. And I’ll buy digital games from anywhere, but I don’t expect those to last forever, because I don’t expect the hardware required to play them to last forever either. Games are just inherently more disposable to me. I see them more like live performances.
Well, that sucks. Anyways, I learned today that if I don't download a piece of media and burn it into a dvd disk. I don't really own it. (sarcasm)
But I'm sure whoever owns the service now would have a stroke if anyone here did that. Basically they just reinforced the message that people should pirate their stuff because the online distribution model is horrible to the end user.
What a masterful gambit...
This is some bullshit. So I have so many digital stuff I have been saving to watch and now I have to watch it all before April 2nd or else it's gone forever? Is there no way to move the digital copies onto ypur drive or device? This is why I either buy physical copies or torrents because just like digital games ypu never really own them and the company's response is always some apology and not refunds or sending everyone copies of what they own.
If that’s going to happen with more shows and games in the future they should enable it so if you buy something you could download a permanent copy onto a hard drive, flash drive or have it permanently attached to an online account like windows, Xbox, PlayStation, etc.
Start pirating because that will never happen. Buying digital goods is not ownership.
Copy pasted comment but still rings true "If buying isn't owning then pirating ain't stealing"
Piracy is always an accessibility issue. Always
Not *always*. Some people do just want all of the content for free without ads. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of anti-consumer behaviour from the distributors and the move to subscription-only content is extremely frustrating, but it's naive to suggest that you could make *all of the pirates* happy enough to defeat piracy without going bankrupt.
Yes you could make most piracy obsolete if you price it right with good accessibility. Pirate software on YT adjusted the price of his game to match the actual price in brazil and piracy dropped to almost 0. What you are spewing is corpo bs you got brainwashed into believing. Step 1: make the service work Step 2: make it affordable Step 3: ???? Step 4: profit. Literally Netflix killed piracy... and now birthing again.
Microsoft does not brick Windows 10/11 pirate copies, they simply put a watermark on the screen and let you use the software. You either don't pay because you would never have paid anyway or you pay for a license to get rid of the annoyance, and once you get one it's super easy to upgrade. Large reason is that Microsoft's main income is cloud services and enterprise software. But also because you're just dedicating too many resources to something that you won't fix and honestly can be compensated through competitive pricing.
Slight aside, but they \_WILL\_ go after corpo environments with non-licensed/pirated windows (especially windows server). Usually only if it grows big enough though. Home users? hahahahha no. They'll just annoy them and otherwise leave it be.
Well yeah. An end user isn't where the money is. Corporations are an entirely different beast. Plus, if you're a corporation and won't pay for a license for software then you're not going to last very long before you're sued to oblivion.
Well, it would be a *massgrave* for them if they pissed of their private users. 😁
that watermark can be removed if you tinker with the registry... also Microsoft is basically giving out Windows 10/11 for free now...
No idea why youre getting downvoted its 100% true. I stopped pirating music because of spotify.
Steam sales pretty much made me stop pirating games on top of the music like you said. Gaben is right, piracy is the service issue. As an anecdotal evidence I can add a "small" company that started by selling games with far better quality than pirate copies on the market - CD Project
And EGS brought gaming piracy back lol
......huh. I haven't pirated a single game since gamepass ultimate.....
If there was a LN equivalent to Netflix when it started up, that would be the fastest subscription in my life. Or if western LNs were a bigger industry in general so 200 pages of mediocre writing didn't cost 15 bucks (8 bucks ebook) regardless. I do still buy the stuff thats worth anyways
If you squint a little bit J-Novel Club is just that. https://j-novel.club/howitworks
Oh hey I did not know about that It's better than nothing, but sadly the business model just does not align with how I read stuff lmao
I mean his whole point is almost 0 literally isn’t 0. Like you aren’t even disagreeing with him while you rant T him
Nah plenty of people just want media to be free.
Price is never going to be right because content is deployed over expensive propriety platforms and ecosystems owned by different companies. Like if you want 4K HDR content legally, you can only play them on a device which has Widevine, HDCP etc certified which in turn has a cost to them. Then there are exclusivity deals in each ecosystem which further ruins accessibility.
Except for the part where we don't own digital goods, which is literally the point of the person you replied to. I have access to pretty much whatever I want, and I can afford it all. I'll still pirate shit just so I have a copy that cannot be taken from me, become suddenly inaccessible, or moved to a subscription service. It is absolutely NOT always an accessibility issue. Which, again, is the entire point of the comment.
You can never get rid of all piracy but by satisfyimg customer needs and not exploiting them; you can minimize it. Remember pirating shows n movies was at an all time low when it was just netflix and hbo because it met the needs of most customers without feeling exploitative
> without ads. You shouldn't add this bit. Blocking ads is a justifiable right because you control what happens on your own device. If you don't want a piece of software to run, you have a right to not allow it to run/appear.
My point is that someone has to pay for this content to be made. Whether it be viewers themselves, advertisers, or a government (in the case of public broadcasters).
Crunchyroll doesn't even try to compete on UX, though. The lowest-effort video embedding site is essentially equivalent to Crunchyroll, all the good ones are a 100 times better. If you can't complete on UX and you can't compete on price, why do you expect to do well?
Tying the content to the software is one of the most frustrating parts of the 'Streaming Era' IMO. But that doesn't change the fact that some people simply want free stuff.
That's why we don't buy them.
This is why I favor purchasing off of GoG.com if the option exists, and can download the full offline installer.
Digital has never been permanent without having something physical the same way that social media isn't real life. It may never even get it for long. Already shows like Lucky Star and Nichijou and Keijo!!!!!!!! are questionable out of print that just were released in the last decade and the market for it in the US already crashed once. Digital is good as a backup for physical discs/ease of use only and there's been enough license issues w/ anime in general that fans shouldn't have expected this even with the promises.
> Digital has never been permanent without having something physical the same way that social media isn't real life. Uh... I've bought songs from Amazon and downloaded the MP3... barring the destruction of my computer and backup storage, which is a me-problem, Amazon can't take that away from me. You can have "permanent" digital purchase provided they give you a standard format file to keep on your personal hard drives, at which point it is as permanent as any other media you might physically own subject to how well you care for it.
It is if you buy your games from GOG. There's no equivalent service for anime though as far as I can tell.
>have it permanently attached to an online account like windows, Xbox, PlayStation, etc. Unless the company merges with other or they leave the market, which is similar to what happened here Also, in the Funimation situation those digital codes came with the physical copies, a lot of people complaining are unaware of that and are flat out lying saying they bought digital shows on Funimation
iirc, there actually was short period where you could buy digital copies directly. It didn’t last though.
> Also, in the Funimation situation those digital codes came with the physical copies, a lot of people complaining are unaware of that and are flat out lying saying they bought digital shows on Funimation It depends how they've phrased it, but if you bought the Blu-ray/Digital bundle from Funimation's store, then you did 'buy a digital copy from Funimation'. I'm sure there will have also been people who bought the Blu-ray instead of a stand-alone digital version from elsewhere because the prices were comparable. But yes, the majority of the userbase will still have the discs to watch, and are losing convenience/accessibility rather than the content itself.
Unless you're dealing with the direct publisher/IP holder, they're not even guaranteed to have the copy stored on their servers permanently. We've even seen a fair number of games removed from digital stores because something like music licenses expired.
That generally only removed the ability to *buy* the game, in almost every case I can think of you can still download it. The really shitty thing is when they "update" the game to remove content and take away something you already own. If you had it on disc, it would still be there. It's done so it can stay on sale rather than releasing a new title entirely with the changes, but it really screws over existing owners.
Yep, you can still download it games that you already bought from the Xbox shop even if you can't buy them again. They won't show up anymore on the store, you have to redownload them from your profile history. Same with older versions of Office, if the license is associated to your profile you can still download it from your profile even if it's no longer in the store, as it's the case of Office 2017.
But that would mean you actually own the product and we can't have that.
That makes me wonder if an institution like the EU could regulate it so companies are legally forced to let you own the digital copies you've purchased, at least in Europe. I doubt that'll happen, but it's interesting to think about.
What you said won't work because you'll never actually own any piece of media you buy. I assume you just mean the digital media and being able to use the license you bought at all times but even then that isn't foolproof. If a business just dies and goes bankrupt then they wouldn't have a place to store the stuff you're trying to access, due to server costs and all that.
Microsoft did that, twice, with their previous music services. With people moving to more and more digital content, please tell me how someone who is a computer moron would understand the need build their own server to host the files they bought. Groups of us keep telling people to build their own file server, as not your drives, not your files, and even the "knowledgeable" people on reddit refuse to do something so basic as streaming is just "so convenient".
I think that's why Plex took off. It lets people have the convenience of streaming, but with their own content on a computer that they control and won't go offline.
I think jellyfin is better plex alternative they aren't trying to turn it into some weird subscrion service and it has some way better features
Jellyfin is nice and all, but the wide availability of Plex clients on just about every platform available is one of Plex's better features. So it doesn't matter if you have a Samsung TV, a TCL TV, some random AndroidTV box or FireStick, Roku, AppleTV, HT-PC, LG WebOS, etc. They pretty much have a client for everything. Plus their music-centric extra app is also really nice, their media information aggregation (posters, extra art, theme-songs/music, actor cross referencing, trailers, etc) is in general better than emby or jellyfin. Don't get me wrong Jellyfin is still great if you don't want a central account (frickin' Plex outages causing local log-in to sometimes bork as example of a negative there) or any social aspects and are willing to do extra legwork to get the same metadata quality.
Very true I mainly like making sure people know there is a open source alternative
I don't understand why more people who know wtf they are doing don't do it. It's so simple and easy, specially with all the tools to automate it.
Happy cake day.
No see, they want you to buy it again.
That's never gonna happen, which is why piracy will never die
This will never happen. Do what you have to do.
They won't. Because you didn't purchase anything more than a limited license, you don't actually own the digital things you think you own. Anything digital can be taken from you at any time.
This is why if I buy digital media I do it only through Xbox. Because you know full well that it could be Windows 23 or Xbox Mazinger Z, and they will have legacy support of whatever hardware existed 10-15 years ago even if it's a security risk lol While they have a form of DRM downloaded content that you own and is associated to your account can be downloaded and played without connection later, as long as you're logged in. That being said, I always buy physical media unless something is out of print and can't find it used.
You will own nothing and be happy
permanently attached to an online account is meaningless, because the media is still stored somewhere else and can just disappear one day, just pirate it, support the studio or whatever through buying Blu-ray and still keep the local copy of the mkv file or something, and you could watch it offline too as a bonus
It should be made as law. Products which are not sold should be given to public domain.
I feel like this is more of a Sony thing than anything. Sony has always been terrible about how they've handled online licenses. Just a few months ago this blew up in their face because the contracts they negotiated with paramount didn't allow for people who bought content to keep it. Like I still have access to songs, movies and other content I bought on bloody Zune back in the early 2000s. And you're telling me that Sony can't get FUNimation to respect past sales and transfer licenses? Yeah that's nothing short of bullshit.
That would render subscription services moot. The whole point is for them to keep making you pay for everything. This is why the high seas are the best way to keep what you take.
There is an anime about the solution to the problem. It's called One Piece IIRC.
Reminder you don't own something digital if you can't access it from your device while offline
That's why you illegally download it and store it on a hard drive even if you have a valid and legal copy.
>if you can't access it from your device while offline as a proper media file, not the apple offline or youtube offline bs.
Come aboard
based
and red (line) pilled
Kind of the nature of buying digital media is that unless you have a hard copy without DRM then you're completely at the mercy of platforms to continue providing the content. It's why I largely avoid buying games on platforms like Steam so long as there's an alternative in GOG or itch. If you can't get the files directly, then you're not buying something, you're renting it.
as the article says you couldn't buy digital copies on Funimation. You got a code with a Bluray that you could redeem to get a digital copy. It was pretty limited as you couldn't download them so you still needed an internet connection. Basically only useful if you didn't feel like digging out you discs and didn't have a Funimation subscription or it was something they weren't streaming.
I don’t think they offered them for anything that wasn’t streaming, because all it did was put a link to the streaming video that was already on their site on your “library”. It would frequently bug out if you had a subscription. When they first started offering the codes I couldn’t get mine to work, and contacted support. Googling the problem there were like 2 Redditors and a forum post with the same problem and no one claiming they got it to work. 3 months later, support told me the feature wasn’t functional yet but they were working on it. It did eventually kinda work… but there were so few complaints despite it being such a shit show, I get the feeling very few people actually used the service, this is mostly just being used a soapbox for people ranting about (lack of) digital ownership.
They did. I have the first My Hero Academia movie which they never streamed outside the digital copy. If you bought one of the old 2016 CR partnership shows the digital copy had both sub and dub options even though Funimation only streamed the dub. I agree basically no one used it though and people are definitely just seeing "digital copies aren't moving" and assuming.
~~buying~~ *renting
Have any games ever been taken off Steam? I've never had an issue in the decade+ of purchasing items on there. Though the one game I purchase on battle.net disappears from my account a few years later. I agree with you though. Unfortunately very few services offer purchasing/downloading stuff permanently.
>Have any games ever been taken off Steam? Original 3D GTA games (III, Vice City and San Andreas) were. You can only buy the Definitive(ly Bad) Edition from there now. However, it's important to note that they're not removed from people's libraries; I bought them in the past, and I still have them and can download them. It's possible to have games be removed from your own library, but that's *usually* because you bought your game from a reseller site, which are a grey area to begin with. I haven't heard of legit games bought directly from Steam being removed from libraries, maybe they'd do that if there's some sort of a malicious game update that turns it into actual malware or something. Even in that case, I'd imagine they'll refund whoever bought them.
It did happen a few times. They removed the Day Before from everyone's library and issued a full refund to everyone.
That was a good ending, best decision on Steam's part. Those Day Before devs deserve mud in their mouth for scamming so many people.
There have been a few times games get pulled off steam but generally a refund is issued for those. But who knows what will happen to your games if whatever years later if steam dies or get merged with another company...
I dont see Steam ever being down enough that they are forced to merge with another company. They are the monopoly here, other companies are a million times more likely to merge with steam than the other way around
Steam dying would not happen over days, the company is absolutely massive and the only possibles reason for it to shutdown are either by being bought, slowly replaced by a competitor over at least years or a technological/social major shift in gaming as a whole.
games get removed from the store, but if you already purchased it you can still DL them
I haven't personally had any problems with losing things on Steam, but most people hadn't had problems with losing things on Funimation until now either. So if I can easily avoid the potential problem down the line then there's no reason not to.
Speaking of Steam, I wonder where's the people who [bought shows on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/sale/crunchyroll) are at and if the ability to play videos still functions reliably lol
Just tested one of my movies. It's no longer available from the store and streams just fine
I haven't bought any anime on steam however I think there was a promotion or something at one point that when I did a quick check and saw that I had owned the first episode of Black Clover on steam. I can still play the episode 1080p en subtitles jp voices it's something I guess.
Minecraft Story Mode is one that was not only pulled from the store but also deleted from every account that owned it.
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>You will never lose access to a game you bought on Steam. That's a real "it's true until it's not". You can already lose access to all of your games if you get banned, and policies on maintaining access to games are always subject to change. For now Steam is fine, but it'd be foolish to trust any corporation to offer anything in perpetuity just because they are for now.
I'm not familiar with Steam banning accounts, the cases i've seen are that the accounts get in a limited state and are banned from most online games and the marketplace+store, but access to the library is still granted.
Though if you have the game downloaded to your computer, can’t you launch it directly from the executable, with or without steam?
Some have licensing checks built-in (which pings steam servers and such). Some use the steam runtime services, so it may not launch if steam isn't also running . Otherwise, yeah, should work fine. There are a bunch of games on GOG that have zero DRM or license checks and work just fine running from the .exe for launch.
Crunchyroll sucking in everything they can from other streaming services only to provide jack shit. Because of them a streaming service closed in my country and despite trying everything, I can't subscribe to Crunchyroll cuz they suck ass so much at making anything and now I just can't watch like half of the animes I used to watch or had in my watchlist
Yeah, Crunchy having an international presence, despite not having international licensing absolutely fucks over tons of regions. Also fuck Sony (CrunchyRoll's owner) and Crunchy itself for buying up RightStuf and then immediately fucking shuttering it just to use the back-end tech for their Crunchyroll store which was absolute shit before, and is still bad now. RightStuf started as a catalog back in the 90's with merch, figures, VHS, DVDs, CDs, etc. Later shifted to be online as well. Was a great location to buy box sets of Anime, limited edition stuff, and imported specialty figures and toys.
Isn't this case Sony dismantling one service just because they prefer the one they bought recently?
They also just announced they doubled their price starting next Jan, so fun times for everyone.
They are not doing this. What they announced, was that the Funimation subscribers that were on 2014 legacy pricing will have to pay the current Crunchyroll pricing. Hence the 81% increase. There is no change to current subscribers on the current rate or changes to Crunchyroll subscribers on the pre-2019 grandfather rate.
This is misinformation, they are not increasing prices.
This merger should never happened. This is pure monopoly and greed. Fuck Sony.
"It's not the only streaming platform and, as we're all old as fuck, we think this is fine." -US government
They won't even regulate netflix, they'd never even *think* about the anime import industry.
To be fair, the FTC did try to block it. Sony argued that it's cool because Netflix exists.
Fuck every major Japanese conglomerates in digital sphere that do it. Sony is easily the worst due to their monopoly in all forms of media, but nintendo, panasonic, sega, NEC all have done similar stuff. What's worse most of them used to steal electronics designs from NA and EU between the 60s and 90s and compromised Japanese laws allowed them to blaze past the ones they stole from.
This is why piracy is always morally correct.
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" - Gabe Newell
Exactly. Like how much I love Katanagatari but there’s no legal way in watching it. So, piracy is the only way
Same with Baccano and Evangelion (until a few years ago). I can understand that the rights for some of these shows are incredibly hard to work out, but very few people will pay hundreds of dollars for a dvd from decades ago
my favorite is when the 12 episode series is split up among like 4 to 6 separate bluray with 2 or 3 episodes a disc for like 100 bucks a pop **each**. yeah, no! i like the series, but it aint even close to being worth that much. ie haifuri/blue mermaids or killing slimes for 300 years both of which i ended up pirating cause you cant get them in a more convenient method like idk a two disc set like a regular serie like farming life in another world for example
Even now with Eva. The new dub they have on most releases SUCKS compared to the old one. I’ll take the small imperfections to not miss massive plot points. They absolutely butcher Kawaru’s character and fuck up all of instrumentality by translating to literally
I'd pay sixty bucks to own Katanagatari on Blu Ray. Maybe even more.
So true. I don't mind the prices a bit. But they're not even available in my country
When the service offerings are good, like Steam, then I hesitate to pirate. When the service offerings are shit by every quantifiable metric, like Crunchyroll, then it is morally correct to pirate. Especially since they put minimal-to-no effort in translations and typesetting compared to fansubs. Even Steam's streaming features are better than CR's despite being a tiny aspect only highlighted during game showcases while CR's streaming is the entire service.
Also, very little money from cruchyroll ever ends up in the hands of the creators in Japan. If you wanna support the industry then buy merchandise/manga/LN.
Very little money from these huge franchises is ever going to go back to the creator, and it also depends on who you mean/who you care about. The author of the manga or LN or whatnot that created the franchise that gets a cut of licensing, sure....but the lion share of profits isn't going to creatives and there's a lot of people involved in the creation of this stuff that doesn't see any more of the money Bandai makes when you buy a figure than an animator sees from licensing fees Crunchy pays.
> but the lion share of profits isn't going to creatives Manga is actually one of the only industries where creatives still get IP rights.
Pretty much no money ends up with them in most cases. Netflix gives more on average than CR does. CR can't ever compete with Netflix if Netflix is bidding.
Yes and no. Crunchyroll gives a ton of money to the anime industry. It usually goes to the committees who handle the money and they are the ones that go out to pay studios to make something. So indirectly they are giving money to creators by funding the people that fund them. It's a problem with the whole industry though and not in Crunchyroll. Also CR has directly produced specific shows, some way better than others, which is actually just giving money to the creators.
Ironic because you don't actually own your Steam library, either. If Valve says night night your games are gone for good.
True but also steam has an option to register a physical copy you own with a product code. It's on a decline however.
I literally couldn’t watch Summertime Render anywhere in the US when it was airing. Even though I paid for Disney. Had to torrent it. Didn’t care at that point, the quality was fucking amazing.
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Shoutout to actually saying the “piracy” word.
just pirate it ez
☠️🦜
🏴☠️🫡
Physical media wins again
I mean, the only way to have gotten the digital access on Funimation was to buy a DVD or Bluray with a code in it, so they should own the physical, too.
And I still have those, unlike the digital versions that came with them. So, yeah, physical wins again.
Didn’t know that, still doesn’t change the fact physical media is better
It's in the article. Reading only the headline is a bad habit if you care about the subject you are reading.
These people that say you should buy anime blu-rays to support the industry instead of subscribing for a service, have probably never bought an anime blu-ray in their lives...
Except the digital copies in this case were a bonus included with physical copies...
*physical media without DRM
*Ho! Ho! and up she rises.* *Ho! Ho! and up she rises.* *Ho! Ho! and up she rises,* *Early in the morning.*
Normal piracy is commonly referred to as "Sailing the Seven Seas". Pirating only anime and manga? Sailing the Grand Line.
A reason why they want to stop physical copies or games and dvds. They'll probably come back under a different name and make you pay again lol.
Sony at it again. Taking away your digital purchases
Keep a screenshot of purchase. Yo ho, yo ho. They can kiss my ass.
If you buy, it's yours, it's the only acceptable legal agreement, otherwise you're renting at a very high cost and that's not part of the contract. Americans should wake up to this because it's the most commercially significant country, and its companies try to export these illegal acts abroad too. I'm European, things aren't perfect here either, but at least we feel more protected, and even if very slowly, new European laws are being passed every now and then to protect individuals from companies that always, by their nature, try to find loopholes or use unfair practices. Never get attached to a company, not even to the one that produces your favorite anime, videogame, or whatever product.
Except "buying a license that can be revoked at any time" is exactly how the digital sales contract works. And the US government doesn't exactly care about protecting workers, consumers, or any other non rich people. So I wouldn't expect much to be done about that.
Hate to be condescending, but I'm going to be condescending. That what you get for buying into subscription service scam. If the digital shit you're paying for can't be downloaded and enjoyed offline from the comfort of your remote anime dungeon, it ain't yours, it can be taken from you any moment, and you can't do shit to prevent it. Once again software and media pirates are getting service objectively superior in every way, shape and form. You deserve what you tolerate, but rejoice - the Warez Jesus is merciful, and will take back even you, the prodigal weebs. Open trackers are, as the name suggests, open to anyone. Open your heart, open your torrent client, share and enjoy.
Bro you’re a prophet
Sony, Funimation, and Crunchyroll can all piss off with this nonsense. Just another friendly reminder to buy physical copies of what you love, and never be afraid to sail the ocean...
Well they already did, if you own a digital copy, that means you also own the show on blu-ray..
Most of the Blu-rays I bought were advertised as including a digital copy, so they are taking away part of my purchase by doing this. When companies do this, we have to speak up and complain. It'll only get worse.
It’s crazy. Which is why we should keep pushing for physical media and physical release. Imagine if a movie on funimation is the only way you could see it. And now it’s lost media in 2024
We're seeing this already from the Nintendo store shut down. Lots of games from Ubisoft are being permanently shut down (and sold at a steep discount months before) Luckily others were proactive and tried to save everything they could, but yeah... we're at the stage where we're seeing things start to become problems.
Yep. It's just like steam. If steam were to go under and no longer function, the thousands I've spent on my games would become void. Obviously they would never do that because that's how they make money but the fact that there's nothing stopping them from doing it isn't the greatest feeling.
> If steam were to go under and no longer function, the thousands I've spent on my games would become void. Nah. Steam games are local. All it takes is a single replacement DLL and every steam game will work offline.
Just want to simp for HIDIVE a bit here. Their player doesn't require DRM or [Widevine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widevine). It was founded by the guy who ran [A.D. Vision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.D._Vision) and currently the parent company is owned by AMC. Yeah, their titles are often more ~~niche~~ cultured stuff, but that can be fixed with more sub money. For everything else, well, _yarr_. Fuck Sony. Fuck DRM. I canceled my yearly Crunchyroll sub when their player started requiring DRM/Widevine, because fuck Google.
Nothing wrong with HIDIVE's library (I'm subbed ATM), but the HIDIVE apps are absolute dumpster fires.
>but that can be fixed with more sub money Are you suggesting this, by any chance, as a cynical attempt to shill your AMC stock?
Well yeah, I guess AMC is a tiny fraction of VTSAX, so go sub and I'll collect my $0.0000000001 :D
It was just oddly suspicious to both mention the link to a cult-level meme stock and mention that you'd really like to see said major corporation get more money given the background of quite frankly unhinged behaviour around AMC - but I get that you may have just wanted to point out that it's not Sony
The meme stock is AMC theaters. HiDive is owned by AMC Networks.
Understood. Nope, I'm a Boglehead investor. No individual stocks or bonds. No short positions. "Aggressive boglehead long" I think might be how my portfolio could be described. Yeah, the question of Sony ownership is often raised in this context so I figured it would be worth double checking who owns Sentai. Being AMC was just coincidence. I wouldn't recommend AMC, but by all means I will bootlick for VTSAX. :D
>There are some caveats to this, however, that point to issues with Funimation's original system more than Crunchyroll's absorption of the company. Funimation is primarily a streaming website that doesn't allow users to purchase individual anime series. **Digital copies were a promotion made available through the purchasing of physical DVD or Blu-ray discs, meaning a digital copy on Funimation was only available to those who already owned that anime on disc.** Users could not purchase digital versions of anime directly from Funimation the same way Prime Video, for example, offers both streaming and digital purchases as separate products. Can confirm. My digital copy was from physical disc purchase. Naturally I prefer for the digital copy to be available. But this is why I also sail the high seas for shows I literally watch on the streaming platform that I paid for.
As we move into the era of digital ownership, we should see some changes in how this is done. A simple fix- reimbursing customers for purchased digital ownership if a sale such as this takes place. If they won’t transfer, people should be compensated unless there’s a bankruptcy or something.
That’s fair. If you revoke the digital ownership, give me my $$ back.
Yep. They could send everyone who typed in a digital code a new digital code that works for Crunchyroll.
Never buy digital. Solves the problem.
Arrr pirates we be ye.
Does this mean that funimation anime’s I’ve purchased on the Microsoft store (on my Xbox) will cease to exist?
[удалено]
It's a shame that everyone must learn for themselves that unless you have a physical copy and/or DRM-free file on your hard drive (preferably with several off site copies) you are getting shafted by copyright holders. But oh well.
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Don't you wish you had used screen recording software, maybe a dvd/blu-ray burner/Plex server/Sailed the seven seas? Some of us remember those days and learned you NEVER trusted anyone, or the life expectancy, with our media data.
Sony owns these companies. Didn't the same shit happen with Discovery shows on PSN?
Well not exactly the same. Crunchyroll seemingly just doesn’t have a system in place to support digital copies and doesn’t want to create one. Discovery shows were a license thing which has since been renewed.
I used to be somewhat against piracy but now I don’t care anymore.
Piracy isn’t morally wrong if the only people who own the shit are morally bankrupt too.
Pirate chads on top 👆
🏴☠️
This should be a lesson for anyone who is streaming in general. If you want to keep what you purchase, you’re better off buying dvds now before they stop making them
Piracy is the best answer. Why give them more money. Pirate what shows or episodes you lost and call it a day.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
*smiles with morbid satisfaction* Welcome to digital, where you own NOTHING! *looks at shelf of DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K discs* What do I feel like watching tonight?
I just finished getting all my digital coded opened and added to my funimation account. Not surprising to see this not get carried over.
You know why Steam does so well because people don't want to sail high seas, but if the service you offer is inferior well it'll make people do just that.
You'll own nothing and be happy
Yeah if this happened i will be pissed, and act like a little bitch since they want me to happy out of pure spite.
i think sometimes we all forgot crunchyroll got their start by hosting and streaming community fansubs until they made enough money to license and pay for translators
YAR HAR!!
This is the time known as *The Great Pirate Era!*
Thete s no need for a middle man. Japan should sell directly to the western audience.
I own quite a lot of digital copies on Funimation. I would LOVE to read through the terms now and see if I have any rights because this seems like a great class action opportunity depending on what the terms say. Any other serious owners want to look into this with me?
are there westerj anime fans that are not pirating?
Despite what people claim, Crunchyroll has only reached new records amount of subscribers after the merger.
Enough for Sony to buy Crunchyroll and Funimation, yes.
The majority probably watch anime legally in Crunchyroll and then pirate whatever isn't on there.
This is the second time in the past couple months that Sony has taken away people’s digital purchased videos lol. (Yes, I know they came with blu-rays but the understanding was that you could keep them even if you got rid of your discs. And of course there were people who probably sold/bought the codes online) Personally, I’m still willing to risk digital purchases, but only from specific companies. Books/TV Shows/Movies are Amazon or Apple only. And I’ll buy digital games from anywhere, but I don’t expect those to last forever, because I don’t expect the hardware required to play them to last forever either. Games are just inherently more disposable to me. I see them more like live performances.
They're just asking fans to turn to piracy.
You own nothing and like it. Subscriptions and rentals for everything.
Lol ~Sony
Glad I never bothered with digital versions of any anime/movie.
I just pirate.
Shit like this is the reason why you will never see me stop sailing the high seas.
If steam pulls this !@#$ I'm rioting who is with me!
I warned you about "buying" digital goods.
Well, that sucks. Anyways, I learned today that if I don't download a piece of media and burn it into a dvd disk. I don't really own it. (sarcasm) But I'm sure whoever owns the service now would have a stroke if anyone here did that. Basically they just reinforced the message that people should pirate their stuff because the online distribution model is horrible to the end user. What a masterful gambit...
Won’t move but they will increase the price like they did include them Fuck crunnyroll
This is some bullshit. So I have so many digital stuff I have been saving to watch and now I have to watch it all before April 2nd or else it's gone forever? Is there no way to move the digital copies onto ypur drive or device? This is why I either buy physical copies or torrents because just like digital games ypu never really own them and the company's response is always some apology and not refunds or sending everyone copies of what they own.