- Hundreds of TV episodes and movies will be removed from PlayStation Store accounts on September 1
- People had bought the movies and shows.
- No apology, much less compensation, from Sony
One of the best things about Blu-ray discs is that you don’t need to worry about Sony sneaking into your house in the middle of the night and taking them.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for digital purchases: Sony is removing hundreds of movies and TV show episodes purchased from the PlayStation Store from people’s collections without compensation. When September comes, they will be gone.
The list of affected movies and shows is on Sony’s website and includes remastered ones. Terminator 2: Judgment Day, gomorrahthe Rambo movies and many more. At issue is the end of a licensing agreement between Sony and StudioCanal, a major producer and distributor of movies and shows.
As Sony explains, starting September 1, 2026, “you will no longer be able to access content you have previously purchased from StudioCanal and it will be removed from your video library.”
To add insult to injury, the notification ends with the PlayStation motto: “The game has no limits.”
As you can imagine, this has gone down. very Good with movie fans.
Why is Sony withdrawing people’s purchases?
Sony’s deal with film production company StudioCanal has ended, and that means Sony no longer has the rights to sell those TV shows and movies. The fact that people bought them is irrelevant to Sony, because the terms and conditions that absolutely no one reads say that you are buying a license to watch a show or movie, not to own it.
Since the news broke, my social networks have been full of people saying the same thing: Sony’s move is very good publicity for digital piracy. And it’s definitely upset a lot of movie fans, like Quelonious on r/movies, who promised, “I’ll never buy streaming movies again,” though that poster sticks with Blu-ray instead of flying a pirate flag.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t make digital movie purchases,” Rewdyroo writes on the same subreddit, noting that “you’re not buying the movie. It works more like a rental and if the movie license on the service you bought it on runs out, your digital movie is gone too, there’s no refund. It’s happened to me on Amazon and I’ll never buy a digital movie again.”
Mildmichigan spoke for many: “This should be illegal. If I buy something digitally and the platform loses distribution rights or whatever, then it should be grandfathered.”
We’ve talked about this before because it’s a key reason to keep buying Blu-rays: Blu-rays are yours forever. But it’s a problem with all types of digital media, dating back to the days of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure digital music, which sold audio files that died when Microsoft shut down servers. Whether it’s a streaming catalog or GTA 6, if it’s not on physical media you can never be sure it will be yours forever.
(Is now a good time to mention that Criterion’s 4K Blu-rays are 50% off right now in the US?)
Are you thinking of buying a new television?
Try our TV size and model finder! You tell you how far you sit from your TV, we’ll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from picture quality experts, and we’ll recommend our three best TVs in that size at different prices.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds.
