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Crunchyroll locks merchandise store behind premium subscription tiers

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

Sony's anime streaming service, Crunchyroll, has implemented a new policy requiring users to subscribe to its "Mega" or "Ultimate" fan tiers to access its merchandise store. This means customers must pay $14 or $18 per month, respectively, to purchase exclusive collaborations, drops, and premium releases. The decision has been met with significant backlash from fans on social media, who criticize the move as greedy and express their intent to cancel subscriptions or shop elsewhere. This follows similar price increases by Sony for its PlayStation Plus service and hardware. AI

IMPACT Minimal direct impact on AI operations; primarily affects consumer access to merchandise.

RANK_REASON A change in access policy for a merchandise store, not a core product or frontier release.

Read on Forbes — Innovation →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

Crunchyroll locks merchandise store behind premium subscription tiers

How we ranked this

Signal score
0 / 100
Composite score across the factors below. Higher = stronger signal that this story matters right now.
Newsworthiness bucket
Tool
A change in access policy for a merchandise store, not a core product or frontier release.
Source corroboration
Single-source cluster
Only one publisher covered this so far. Single-source stories can still rank when the publisher is high-authority, but they lack cross-source corroboration.
Topics
product, other
Editorial topic classification. Feeds into how the story surfaces on /topic/<slug> hub pages and into the per-entity coverage mix.
AI-industry relevance
Low
Off-topic or adjacent — cluster remains reachable but doesn't surface in AI-industry rankings.
Story freshness
72 days old
Aged out of breaking-news scoring windows; ranking reflects the durable signal from the full source set.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [1]

  1. Forbes — Innovation TIER_1 English(EN) · Paul Tassi, Senior Contributor ·

    Sony’s Crunchyroll Has Put Its Merchandise Store Behind Paywall

    Crunchyroll, has announced that subscribers will need to be in its “Mega” or “Ultimate” fan tiers in order to make purchases in its merchandise shop,

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