Crunchyroll has updated their terms of service and it's not good
Posted: 27 Jul 2026, 15:23
**Sony’s grip on Crunchyroll is starting to look less like “streaming convenience” and more like control over an entire market**
Sony now sits at the center of a lot of the anime ecosystem through Crunchyroll, after acquiring Crunchyroll from AT&T in 2021 and later folding more of the retail side into the same umbrella through the Right Stuf acquisition. That matters, because once a company owns the main streaming platform and a major anime storefront, it can start shaping what fans can access, what they can buy, and what they have to pay.
The biggest red flag is how much the pricing and access structure has changed after that consolidation. Crunchyroll raised subscription prices again in 2026, with Fan going from $7.99 to $9.99, Mega Fan from $11.99 to $13.99, and Ultimate Fan from $15.99 to $17.99. At the same time, its store is being pushed behind higher tiers, with Fan subscribers reduced to browsing while Mega and Ultimate users get actual purchase access. That does not look like a market with healthy competition. It looks like a platform that knows users have fewer real alternatives now, so it can squeeze harder.
Then there is the issue of things disappearing after people already paid for them. Crunchyroll’s own support page says Funimation digital copies are not supported on Crunchyroll, meaning access to those previously available digital copies will not be available. GameSpot also reported that the Funimation shutdown meant users would not keep their digital copies of purchased DVDs and Blu-rays. That is exactly the kind of thing digital consumer rights are supposed to protect against, because a purchase should not turn into a vanishing license the moment a company reorganizes its services.
The catalog problem is just as bad. Anime titles continue to disappear from Crunchyroll’s library as licensing changes, and that makes the service feel less like a library you can rely on and more like a rental window controlled from the top down. When a company has enough market power, these removals stop feeling like isolated licensing issues and start feeling like part of the same broader squeeze on consumers.
And then there is localization. This part is essential, because for a lot of anime fans, Crunchyroll’s subtitles and translations have become a running joke for the wrong reasons. The Verge reported a 2025 incident where Crunchyroll subtitles for *Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show* were filled with typos, grammatical errors, and even explicit “ChatGPT” remnants, which is pretty hard to defend as a polished professional release. That is before you even get into the broader criticism that some localizations are so loose, awkward, or overcooked that they start reading less like translation and more like fan fiction. In my opinion, that kind of localization failure is not a minor nitpick; it is part of the same pattern of treating fans like they will accept whatever is handed to them.
Sony and Crunchyroll will probably keep calling all of this “improvements,” “curation,” or “better fan experiences,” but the pattern is obvious: less competition, higher prices, more restrictions, weaker ownership, and too many cases where the end product feels worse than what anime fans used to get. That is why this is not just a Crunchyroll issue. It is a warning sign for digital consumer rights in general. If companies can keep tightening the screws without meaningful pushback, then the future of anime distribution starts looking a lot less like convenience and a lot more like dependence.
Sources:
Sony acquisition of Crunchyroll (official):
Sony acquisition PDF (official)
Crunchyroll 2026 pricing update (official)
Crunchyroll premium / tier details (official)
Funimation digital copies not supported (official)
Crunchyroll store membership perks (official)
Gamesradar (1)
Gamesradar (2)
Gamesradar (3)
The Verge
Sony now sits at the center of a lot of the anime ecosystem through Crunchyroll, after acquiring Crunchyroll from AT&T in 2021 and later folding more of the retail side into the same umbrella through the Right Stuf acquisition. That matters, because once a company owns the main streaming platform and a major anime storefront, it can start shaping what fans can access, what they can buy, and what they have to pay.
The biggest red flag is how much the pricing and access structure has changed after that consolidation. Crunchyroll raised subscription prices again in 2026, with Fan going from $7.99 to $9.99, Mega Fan from $11.99 to $13.99, and Ultimate Fan from $15.99 to $17.99. At the same time, its store is being pushed behind higher tiers, with Fan subscribers reduced to browsing while Mega and Ultimate users get actual purchase access. That does not look like a market with healthy competition. It looks like a platform that knows users have fewer real alternatives now, so it can squeeze harder.
Then there is the issue of things disappearing after people already paid for them. Crunchyroll’s own support page says Funimation digital copies are not supported on Crunchyroll, meaning access to those previously available digital copies will not be available. GameSpot also reported that the Funimation shutdown meant users would not keep their digital copies of purchased DVDs and Blu-rays. That is exactly the kind of thing digital consumer rights are supposed to protect against, because a purchase should not turn into a vanishing license the moment a company reorganizes its services.
The catalog problem is just as bad. Anime titles continue to disappear from Crunchyroll’s library as licensing changes, and that makes the service feel less like a library you can rely on and more like a rental window controlled from the top down. When a company has enough market power, these removals stop feeling like isolated licensing issues and start feeling like part of the same broader squeeze on consumers.
And then there is localization. This part is essential, because for a lot of anime fans, Crunchyroll’s subtitles and translations have become a running joke for the wrong reasons. The Verge reported a 2025 incident where Crunchyroll subtitles for *Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show* were filled with typos, grammatical errors, and even explicit “ChatGPT” remnants, which is pretty hard to defend as a polished professional release. That is before you even get into the broader criticism that some localizations are so loose, awkward, or overcooked that they start reading less like translation and more like fan fiction. In my opinion, that kind of localization failure is not a minor nitpick; it is part of the same pattern of treating fans like they will accept whatever is handed to them.
Sony and Crunchyroll will probably keep calling all of this “improvements,” “curation,” or “better fan experiences,” but the pattern is obvious: less competition, higher prices, more restrictions, weaker ownership, and too many cases where the end product feels worse than what anime fans used to get. That is why this is not just a Crunchyroll issue. It is a warning sign for digital consumer rights in general. If companies can keep tightening the screws without meaningful pushback, then the future of anime distribution starts looking a lot less like convenience and a lot more like dependence.
Sources:
Sony acquisition of Crunchyroll (official):
Sony acquisition PDF (official)
Crunchyroll 2026 pricing update (official)
Crunchyroll premium / tier details (official)
Funimation digital copies not supported (official)
Crunchyroll store membership perks (official)
Gamesradar (1)
Gamesradar (2)
Gamesradar (3)
The Verge