I expected to write about Crunchyroll again soon, but this news wasn’t what I was expecting.
Crunchyroll has become a dominant force for anime streaming partly because of its free viewing option. But plenty of watchers have opted to pay to skip the ads and get faster access to current series by signing up for Premium or the upgrade Fan Pack or Super Fan Pack. In fact, they recently celebrated passing three million paid subscribers. That news has been somewhat overshadowed by the fact AT&T is looking to sell Crunchyroll, whether to Sony (who owns Funimation) or someone else.
But perhaps AT&T is deciding not to go through with a deal or is trying to prop up the numbers (either in number of subscribers or revenue) to make it more appealing to potential buyers. Because Crunchyroll announced on August 24th that they are revamping their paid options in the US and elsewhere. Changes were to take place during the week and into early September for international viewers. Here’s the new tiers for Americans:
The annual plan is still available for the $7.99 tier at a yearly price of $79.99. Crunchyroll Premium subscribers in other countries get the same benefits in the Fan and Mega Fan tiers, but they don’t get the Crunchyroll Store discounts. The Ultimate Fan level is replaced with Annual Mega Fan and gives one-year subscribers a 16% off discount versus the monthly Mega Fan price. Costs are roughly equivalent to the US pricing.
The biggest new perk is the addition of offline streaming. Those is a fairly popular benefit (or wanted benefit) for streaming services, but like Funimation, this feature is not available on the lowest-price plan.
I am not surprised that the $14.99 tier was significantly redone. The idea was originally very nice, as it featured combined deals and memberships from several anime-related companies. But most of those partnerships fizzled or barely got off the ground. ANiUTa, for instance, has shut down, and MunchBox only gave you a one-time discount. And now it’s clear the swag bag is an annual gift, not just for new members. Unfortunately, they took away the free shipping at their store in place of a quarterly coupon. A quarterly coupon that is only $10 more off despite costing $15 more over that period of time versus the Mega Fan pack. I’m guessing post office issues, shipping rates raising, and the general chaos of the pandemic all contributed to the free shipping being eliminated. And while there are a couple of other benefits, just as before, I see the $14.99 a month plan being the least popular of the paid options.
Now, the Fan versus Mega Fan tiers…I know a lot of people are upset at in-demand features (offline viewing, multi-device streaming) being restricted to $9.99 and above plans. Again, this is similar to Funimation, and HIDIVE doesn’t allow episodes to be downloaded. However, for US fans, VRV already helps fill that vacuum, and it’s still $9.99 a month. So while I’m sure some people would like first access to Crunchyroll-related events and a four-times-a-year coupon, that probably doesn’t outweigh getting HIDIVE and all the other VRV channels.
The other major difference between tiers is the number of concurrent connections. Before, there was no limit as long as everyone was in the same household.
So this is definitely a downgrade. Perhaps it could be offset if an account could have multiple profiles so that anime fans in the same household could watch what they want to without affecting someone else’s recommendations and queue. That does not seem to be the case though. It is possible that perhaps with the new stated limits, Crunchyroll may be less inclined to ban users who have people from different households watching on one account considering users are paying for the benefit of multiple streams at once.
But judging from some of the comments on the announcement, you’d think Crunchyroll took away a lot. Many fans are upset that offline viewing is paywalled. Others are demanding Crunchyroll fix issues ranging from the video players to the forum’s private messaging system. Some are still upset about titles leaving the service. The loudest voices don’t necessarily represent the majority of users’ thoughts, of course, but, as I’ve said before, yes, Crunchyroll needs to make improvements. But in the case of downloads, users have survived this long without downloads. Now it’s an option for those who want it, and it’s proof the service is cratering? Users may be disappointed it’s not at all tiers, but I don’t think they should be outraged as if simulcasts were now restricted to the $9.99+ plans or something.
Personally, I think the various tiers are better than keeping the old plans but raising rates. People argue about services like Disney+ and Netflix offering the ability to watch without Wi-Fi or cellular service in all their plans. Well, while anime has come a long way in worldwide popularity, people almost always pay more for a niche product. It’s the same reason you can go buy a box set sitcom for $20 but need to pay two to three times that for an anime set or why you are going to have to pay a lot more for a specialty cake at a bakery versus grabbing one at your local grocery store.
On the other hand, there’s the argument to be made that with a lower price versus a lot of competitors, Crunchyroll comes with fewer features. Not to mention the fact a lot of complainers ignore the fact you can’t watch Disney+ or Netflix without a paid subscription. I’m sure Crunchyroll could add offline streaming if everyone was forced to pay.
However, the biggest issue for a lot of fans is that Crunchyroll’s future is still very much up in the air. New owners likely couldn’t (or wouldn’t) mess with any paid-in-advance plans, but those subscribers on a month-to-month plan may only get a few weeks’ notice of any price hikes or feature removals. No doubt that these new tiers haves been in the works for a while since they requires heavy retooling to their platform to know when to stop playing when too many devices are connected or including a download option that limits the risk of being pirated, but I’m sure AT&T and Crunchyroll wished it happened before news of their attempted sale leaked.
On the bright side, perhaps implementing these changes before a sale will deter a new owner from wanting to make further changes to membership for a while in fear of alienating the user base. Still, that’s not guaranteed, and I’m sure many people are hesitant about paying for the Mega Fan or Ultimate Fan tiers and finding out the number of devices has been reduced from four to three or the swag bag isn’t being sent out. The Fan tier, well, there’s not much they can alter for the worse.