Sony deletes purchased StudioCanal films from PlayStation libraries, no refund

Customers who paid to own StudioCanal movies on the PlayStation Store lost them when Sony removed the titles, and no one got their money back. The mechanism sits in PlayStation’s video content terms: buying a movie on the store grants a license to watch it, tied to the distribution rights Sony holds from the content owner. When that deal with StudioCanal lapsed, so did every buyer’s access.

The story lands because the store’s ‘Buy’ button implies ownership it does not deliver. A purchased film behaves like a rental with no end date printed on it, and the platform can revoke it once the underlying rights expire. Sony has pulled purchased video from libraries before under the same logic, so this is a recurring feature of licensed digital storefronts rather than a one-off glitch.

Refusing refunds sharpens the consumer angle. Buyers paid for a permanent-looking asset and received a conditional one, with the condition controlled by a contract they never saw. Regulators in several markets have started questioning whether storefronts may label licensed digital goods as a ‘purchase’ at all, and cases like this feed that argument.