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While PlayStation is known for its video games, players were once able to buy and rent movies and TV shows directly from their PlayStation console. That practice has since gone away, and now it seems like some of those purchases are going away, too.
As noted by Kotaku, select users in the United Kingdom received an email from PlayStation — one that ironically held PlayStation’s tagline of “Play Has No Limits” — stating the licenses from some of their purchases were expiring on September 1st and the affected media would be unwatchable after that date. As stated on PlayStation’s website, these purchases are from French film and television production company StudioCanal. Said list has 551 films and TV seasons and contains such movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Tekken, The Big Sick, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and Evil Dead 2, to name a few.
As was expected, players did not take kindly to this news, as evidenced by the numerous replies in the above post. Many are justifiably pointing out the lack of true digital ownership and propping up the importance of physical media. Licenses can be pulled suddenly like this, showing the impermanence of digital purchases. This is partially why some are angry at Rockstar Games for its ostensibly digital-only launch for Grand Theft Auto 6. From consoles without native disc drives to titles not getting physical releases to games being completely zapped from servers, it’s quite clear how companies are pushing digital distribution more and more, as it is something they have more control over.
PlayStation Has Pulled Movies Before
This is not the only time PlayStation has pulled this move, either. In summer 2022, PlayStation emailed users in Germany and Austria that StudioCanal movies would be unavailable later that year. Then in late 2023, PlayStation also sent out another email to users in the United States saying films and TV shows from Discovery would be getting revoked, a move that wiped out over 1,300 movies and seasons of TV. It’s currently unclear if StudioCanal media is being wiped elsewhere, as the above warning is only on PlayStation’s Great Britain site.
PlayStation began offering movie and TV purchases and rentals on the PS3 in 2010. This persisted for over a decade until August 2021 when the company stopped such offerings citing “tremendous growth from PlayStation fans using subscription-based and ad-based entertainment streaming services.” Essentially, streaming services like Netflix and Hulu became dominant, thus downsizing the need to offer movie and TV show purchases. These streaming services are also built on perpetual renting, once again making it so viewers don’t actually own anything.
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