Crunchyroll Paywalls Its Online Store, Limiting Access To High-priced Subscription Tiers Only
Sony-owned company turns away subscribers, unless you pay more
"ColonelFancy" Mike Lind
7/15/20262 min read
Crunchyroll Online Store will be available to Ultimate and Mega Fans
Sony seems to continuously catch heat from video game fans, it now looks like more flames will be emitted from the anime community with the handling of Crunchyroll. On July 14th, the anime streaming service made an official blog post stating their "changes" to the experience regarding the Crunchyroll Store, an outlet that prioritizes the sale of anime DVDs/Blu Rays, manga, and collectables. But fans will have to spend a minimum of $14 just to have access to it, unfortunately.
Listed as "coming soon", Crunchyroll has decided to make the official shop exclusive to the Ultimate and Mega subscribers.
"This August, we are transitioning the Crunchyroll Store to a brand-new shopping experience that will be available exclusively for Mega and Ultimate Fans," the post says. "The new store captures the excitement of convention-exclusive merchandise—collectibles, curated drops, and limited-release products inspired by the anime series you love."
Crunchyrolls' tiers currently are:
Fan: $9.99
Mega Fan: $13.99
Ultimate Fan: $17.99
Towards the end of 2025, the company ended its free ad-supported tier, which at least allowed users to sit through commercials while enjoying their shows. These were also decisions they had spent a good amount of time scaling back on, in efforts to migrate members to paid tiers.
THE DEATH OF PHYSICAL MEDIA
This decision has been met with fiery backlash from the anime fanbase. It was already an unpopular decision when Crunchyroll acquired and absorbed the online physical media retailer Right Stuf in 2023 in efforts to expand their own ventures. Sony, who purchased Crunchyroll in 2021 for $1.175 billion dollars, also gobbled up Funimation in 2017. Following the boom of online access to anime throughout the 2010's, Sony invested a major stake in buying the largest distributors of the medium.
Now with Sony's decision to end physical games in 2028, many view this as an expanded plan to wall off the sales of DVDs and Blu Ray anime. Given that Sony had ended the printing of blank consumer Blu-ray discs, MiniDV cassettes, and MiniDiscs in 2025, the dominoes began to fall a year ago. As fans, many are seeing the repercussions of mega conglomerates owning EVERYTHING.
SOURCE: Crunchyroll