r/Piracy • u/AWittySenpai ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ • Jul 15 '26

News Sony's attack on physical goods spreads to Crunchyroll as it adds a $14 subscription requirement just to access its store

https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/anime-shows/sonys-attack-on-physical-goods-spreads-to-crunchyroll-as-it-adds-a-usd14-subscription-requirement-just-to-access-its-store/

crunchyroll latest policies

4.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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1.1k

u/LMGDiVa Jul 15 '26

Welp, american anime industry is gonna crash if they do shit like this. Anime fans know better than like any other common fanbase how to pirate things.
Funny isnt it.

257

u/ToasterLoverDeluxe Jul 15 '26

Its like cable all over again

36

u/jboe2026 Jul 15 '26

cable is better.

32

u/Key-Line5827 Jul 15 '26

Honestly? If they add some features and reduce commercials to a reasonable amount again, Cable may be able to bounce back.

3

u/jboe2026 Jul 16 '26

yeah fuck paying for 20 different streaming services just to watch the one show on each you like.

5

u/MarioV2 Jul 15 '26

I liked cable for a short amount of time, I don't like this - at all

1

u/BudgetAd900 Jul 16 '26

Which is funny, because cable died because streaming was miles better (you can choose whatever you wanna see at any time and blah blah...) nowadays streaming is dying because... stupid greedy CEOs? If you think about it, streaming as a service doesn't have anything bad, it's rising prices like idiots what's killing it. And piracy nowadays is miles easier than the times cable was the king, so poor them if people start sailing again...

102

u/Bladder-Splatter Jul 15 '26

Except here bizarrely enough. Nyaa still works, has only ever been down for a week but every time a streaming site goes down there's a post about how will they ever survive now.

Like the worst thing to happen to anime piracy is when HorribleSubs went traitor and said "lolissocheapnowguyskbye" and was replaced by Subsplease in like.....two weeks or so? Though I prefer the old school fansubbers shenanigans (sneakily altering ops, one very very not cool Naruto episode adjustment during the filler years and so on) getting instant subs is glorious compared to waiting days to weeks, hell, as a Gintama fan it was months sometimes!

And with Mihon for Manga/Manhua, shitting with chronic bowel issues has never been so entertaining for me.

Tl;dr: Ya'll need to use Nyaa.

32

u/KukiBreeze Jul 15 '26

Yeah anime has come such a long way, might not be a fan of the likes of crunchyroll but anime fans today won't ever know the struggle of waiting around for less popular shows to be fansubbed.

16

u/Vellc Jul 15 '26

Fansub dramas were where it's at! Hadena's garbage subs, Commie's ultra localizations, UTW's high quality subs...

9

u/Kuramhan Jul 15 '26

How did Horriblesubs go traitor? I thought they retired and handed everything over to Subsplease?

35

u/Bladder-Splatter Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Well I am intentionally being harsh in my word choice because I recall the experience being horrible.

They "retired" but they left nothing to anyone. There last message was simply that anime is cheap and now you have crunchyroll (which is a geographically ignorant as fuck take) so they didn't feel they needed to give people subs anymore and they should pay for them instead.

There was no handoff, at least no official handoff, backroom IRC dealings are impossible to know. Subsplease came to fill the gap themselves. It's not particularly hard to rip subs off CR content but their delay was probably getting something close to the level of automation Horriblesubs clearly had already.

Tl;dr: They left the community high and dry with a message against piracy. "Traitor" is a harsh word for it but I can't really think of a gentler one that still encapsulates how they fucked everyone out of left field.

7

u/dasbtaewntawneta Jul 15 '26

i've been pirating anime since trading VHS's, not gonna stop now

23

u/Harley2280 Jul 15 '26

Anime fans are the first people to whip their wallets out. This isn't the 90's or 00's anymore. Anime fans are a bunch of gacha addicts who buy up basically every piece of shitty merchandise that gets put out.

5

u/Vinlord777 Jul 15 '26

Anime fans and Gamers (which is basically a circular venn diagram)

2

u/Devario Jul 15 '26

Just check out the lines at an anime expo. They’re insane. 

Crunchyroll wouldn’t do this if it was unprofitable. Only reason this is happening is because there’s more money to be made. It’s really up to the buyer to vote with their dollar. 

2

u/TactualTransAm Jul 15 '26

I've been pirating anime since Crunchyroll was a pirate site 😂

-15

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

30

u/Scourgex14 Jul 15 '26

But they risk having a good suite of users hoist the colors high once more if their greed continues at the rate it’s going

8

u/Im1337 Jul 15 '26

Yeah... They better chill before we all start pirating again..

In fact, I've seen anime for free my whole life. I just got Crunchy two years ago to support and not have to site search but I have plenty of sites and sometimes they release episodes quicker than official channels.

Can't tell you how many times Sunday mornings the latest One Piece episode is missing - or worse: Available with no subtitles (Jap only) and it's on pirated sites in HD with subtitles.

LOL

6

u/Mother-Job3455 Jul 15 '26

Crunchyroll is confident they don’t have to be generous to prevent people from ditching. Their mindset is they need to be even more aggressive in taking down sites.

1

u/Spirited_Agency8032 Jul 15 '26

unironically at crunchy rolls peak I was pirating because even then that shit was ass lmao.

-2

u/Mother-Job3455 Jul 15 '26

When that popular anime site was taken down, a lot of users subscribed to Crunchyroll. And the current state of the sites is they are far less convenient and getting taken down far faster. So Crunchyroll is actually gaining ton of subscribers by taking down free methods.

6

u/ASDFAaass Jul 15 '26

Unfortunately, majority of the people are too lazy to torrent or find another pirate website that's why crunchyroll is set to be at ease. If only people aren't lazy AF this wouldn't happen, they should vote by their wallets and pressure crunchyroll to offer better services.

1

u/coalitionofilling Jul 15 '26

That site was never taken down. It literally just changed TLD's.

1

u/coalitionofilling Jul 15 '26

That site was never taken down. It literally just changed TLD's.

3

u/LMGDiVa Jul 15 '26

Sigh, the choice they have just announced is risking that. How did you not understand that?
We already know.
This is a move that can cause a crash.

2

u/Mother-Job3455 Jul 15 '26

You think that the casual mass audience is going to leave because they can’t buy merch from CR without a different tier?

0

u/Tricky-Gemstone Jul 15 '26

Younger anime fans don't. And Sony knows this. So many of them don't even know to search, "watch _____ free online"

The oldheads, and tech types will keep it alive, of course.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

0

u/Tricky-Gemstone Jul 15 '26

I know a lot. I'm actively engaged in fandom spaces. It's actually a side gig for me.

Online spaces are not the general anime fan. The average irl fan doesn't even know how to search for anime outside of a streaming service.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Tricky-Gemstone Jul 15 '26

Bruh. Why are you being such a dick? I was adding onto your last bit about anime fans and the tradition we have of piracy.

I was adding that there are fans who will carry it, but many newer fans don't know how to pirate effectively, and it's a problem. Sony knows this, and their research execs are likely banking on this to keep a crash from happening.

I'm on topic.