In December 2020, Sony, which had already owned the Funimation anime streaming service, announced it was acquiring its biggest rival in that space, Crunchyroll, for $1.175 billion, in March 2022, it was revealed that Crunchyroll would be the surviving streaming service, as Funimation's content would be slowly transferred to Crunchyroll.
This week, the inevitable finally arrived, as Sony announced via an update on Funimation help site that the service would be shutting down completely on April 2, 2024. The site stated that most of its content is already on Crunchyroll, and that it is "working daily to bring more content to all of our fans."
Unfortunately, if you purchased any digital TV shows or films via Funimation in the past, the support page says that Crunchyroll "does not currently support Funimation Digital copies". That means that those digital movies and shows will be going away along with the Funimation service. This is yet another example of digital copies of purchased movies and TV shows that later became lost.
There's no word on if this situation might be resolved. In late 2023, PlayStation owners were told that their digital purchases of shows from the Discovery cable TV channel would go away, but this was resolved with new agreements on licenses. The Funimation situation seems to be more of a technical issue than a rights issue, so it's more likely they will be gone for good.
Along with the Funimation closing in April, Crunchyroll is preparing some price increases in the near future. Gizmodo reports that an email from Crunchyroll states the streaming service will be increasing its annual price from $54.95 to a whopping $99.99 a year.
The somewhat good news is that this huge price hike is not scheduled to start until January 28, 2025. Hopefully, Crunchyroll and its bosses at Sony will walk this price hike back when its customers inevitably revolt against it.
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