How long is “forever”? When it comes to digital media, forever could be as close as a couple of months away.
Funimation, a Sony-owned streaming service for anime, recently announced that subscribers’ digital libraries on the platform will be unavailable after April 2. For years, Funimation had been telling subscribers that they could keep streaming these digital copies of purchased movies and shows, but qualifying it: “forever, but there are some restrictions.”
Not to my knowledge.
But also, I would assume the vast majority of library licenses were from buying blu-rays. You buy a movie or a season/collection and get a card to get the digital copy with it. So people, theoretically, already have physical copies.
In large part because… funimation was “the good anime streaming service”. That is similar to “Sony’s network shit is good compared to Nintendo” and “I would rather get shot in the ass than the foot”
Still hot bullshit though considering that there IS another anime service with similar capabilities under the same company (crunchyroll). I understand license hell and all that but… still.