In a recent interview with The Verge, Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini announced the anime streamer is working on a solution for customers who will lose access to their Funimation digital libraries when its web and app services shut down on April 2.
On February 7, Crunchyroll released a guide explaining how Funimation users could merge their watchlist and queue onto a Crunchyroll account. One stark aspect of the blog post that put anime fans in an uproar was Crunchyroll revealing the merger would not support digital copies of Funimation TV shows and movies.
Before Crunchyroll and Funimation's merger, users could redeem digital copies of anime by entering codes found in DVD or Blu-ray releases. What's more, Funimation users were once promised they would be able to stream their digital versions of shows and movies "forever" with some terms of use caveats. Suffice it to say, Funimation users weren't pleased to hear this feature wouldn't be carried over in the merger.
Now, Purini tells The Verge that Crunchyroll is workshopping a solution for Funimation users that will provide an "appropriate value’ for their lost digital anime titles.
"[We] are working really hard directly with each [customer] to ensure that they have an appropriate value for what they got in the digital copy initially," Purini said. "As people reach out to us through customer service, we are responding and handling each of those requests as they prefer."
Although Purini didn't divulge what exactly quantifies as an "appropriate value", he did provide some insights into how they could manifest.
"So it could be that they get access to a digital copy on any of the existing other services where they might be able to access it," Purini said. "It could be a discount access to our subscription service so they can get access to the same shows through our subscription service.”
It should be noted that Crunchyroll has yet to make an official announcement detailing how it will allocate an equivalent exchange of sorts to match the appropriate value of Funimation's digital copies.
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh.
