PlayStation is removing over 500 movies from UK customers' accounts with no refunds — Iconic films like Terminator 2, Apocalypse Now, and Mulholland Drive are getting deleted

News
By
Published

The movies will be removed by September 1, 2026.

PlayStation leasing program in the UK
(Image credit: Sony / Future)

Sony has unceremoniously informed its PlayStation customers in the United Kingdom that 551 movies from StudioCanal will be removed from their accounts on September 1, 2026. If you bought any of the films included in this list, you'll no longer be able to access them. There is no workaround, no method to offload them to another device; just absolute, emotionless deletion that doesn't even offer refunds.

The lineup includes some truly legendary movies such as Terminator 2, Apocalypse Now, Mulholland Drive, Moonlight, and Dawn Till Dusk — essentially every film that StudioCanal distributed in the UK. Sony cites licensing agreements between it and the French company as the reason behind the sudden removal. The announcement doesn't include any other details beyond the list of the affected films.

Sony removing StudioCanal movies from PlayStation in the UK

(Image credit: Future)

Sony began selling movies and shows on the PlayStation Store in 2008. During the PS3 era, you could actually transfer the content to view on other devices, but that feature was removed on the PS4. In 2021, after the PS5 had launched, Sony stopped selling films and TV series entirely on PSN, which meant that it likely wouldn't renew contractual agreements with studios and distributors going forward.

Latest Videos From

The only exception to this rule was in 2023, when Sony began a similar deletion spree of Discovery Network shows but signed a new licensing deal to keep them on the platform. It remains to be seen whether public backlash can usher in a similar response for StudioCanal movies this time. You might not have heard its name before, but the studio is responsible for bringing countless popular movies to the UK.

For now, this is yet another distressing reminder of the digital precedent corporations have set for us. You no longer truly own any digital content you purchase; rather, it's just being licensed to you indefinitely. And you agree to this precedent "willingly" when you accept all those terms and conditions that veil ownership rights under fine print.

The moment the provider decides it's not viable to maintain said content, you're at risk of losing access to something you already paid for. It's like a subscription service with extra steps — as if people aren't growing wary enough of those already — except it was never advertised like that.

Google Preferred Source

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

TOPICS
Hassam Nasir
Hassam Nasir
Contributing Writer

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

44 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dion_
    There's an information asymmetry here that arguably shouldn't be legal. The licensing agreements between Sony and these studios have terms — a start date, an end date, renewal options — but none of that is disclosed to customers at the point of sale. You could buy a movie without realizing the license expires in two days, then lose it before you've even watched it, with no refund. Disclosing the license expiration date on the store page should be mandatory — especially when storefronts use the words 'buy' and 'purchase' for what is actually a revocable license.
    Reply
  • chaos215bar2
    If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

    All this action by Sony does is prove for the umpteenth time that piracy is 100% morally justifiable. Until the law protects consumers from predatory corporations who would allow their customers to "purchase" a product only to change the terms or unilaterally delete it at a later point, there is zero reason anyone should feel obligated to pay for the content being produced and distributed by a company like Sony.

    So go ahead, pirate content owned or produced by Sony Pictures or Sony BMG and subsidiaries to your heart's content. Just be smart about it so you don't get caught. It's the only morally right thing to do.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    chaos215bar2 said:
    If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
    No. Only if you use a very specific definition of "stealing", then it's not. However, we've had IP laws for hundreds of years (originally to deal with unauthorized copies being made of printed works). "Intellectual Property" is a concept that was introduced as a recognition that the knowledge economy needs such a framework to enable it.

    Even open source software depends on copyrights.

    chaos215bar2 said:
    All this action by Sony does is prove for the umpteenth time that piracy is 100% morally justifiable.
    If nobody paid for IP, then it would not get produced. You should pay for the content you value. If not for legal reasons, then for moral ones.

    People accepted the idea of buying a movie ticket to go see a movie in a theater, even though by doing so you don't "own" the movie and would have to buy another ticket for each time you wanted to watch it that way. At one time, this was the only way to watch movies, and the public was fine with that.

    chaos215bar2 said:
    So go ahead, pirate content owned or produced by Sony Pictures or Sony BMG and subsidiaries to your heart's content.
    This seems to me a self-serving narrative, where people will basically find any excuse possible to justify not paying for something. Criminals always have a rationale for their crimes. I don't say that to convince you that piracy is a crime, but more to make the point that just because you can rationalize something in your own mind doesn't mean it's not a crime.

    The morally-correct response to this incident is not to buy movies (or perhaps other content) on Sony's platforms. Go back to buying physical discs, if you really want to protect your ability to continue watching it.
    Reply
  • naryfa
    If you bought something and it is taken away, that's theft. How much clearer does it need to be? It's basic to the core. I pay, it's mine. The button you told me to click didn't say RENT, it said BUY. Every form of gibberish after that is 2> /dev/null
    Reply
  • bit_user
    naryfa said:
    If you bought something and it is taken away, that's theft.
    Well... if you read the fine print, then it probably says in there that the access is revocable. I'm sure this sort of thing has happened with online game purchases. I know for a fact that it's happened with e-books.

    If I bought something and lost access to it, before I could watch it, I'd be pretty annoyed. However, do you really expect to own it like forever? I think nothing in the cloud is truly forever.

    Even if we're talking about physical media, pressed discs degrade. So, at a certain point, they might become unplayable. VHS tapes and Laserdiscs also degrade.

    It just seems to me that nothing is really and truly forever.

    naryfa said:
    How much clearer does it need to be? It's basic to the core. I pay, it's mine. The button you told me to click didn't say RENT, it said BUY. Every form of gibberish after that is 2> /dev/null
    So, that's how I see it. If the terms & conditions of online purchases don't meet your expectations or requirements, then don't buy.

    These days, you can use AI tools to help you understand EULAs. Years ago, there was an app (I think it was called EULAlyzer?) that would analyze EULAs and highlight suspicious terms & conditions. With the power of modern AI, such tools should be a lot better.

    That said, I could support legislation to make these kinds of terms & conditions clearer for people to understand and maybe place some legal minimums on what is termed an online "purchase".


    BTW, I own plenty of discs & other media. If you want to boycott streaming or online purchases, that's totally fine and a personal decision nobody can really argue with. The only thing I'm against is trying to use this as a justification of piracy.
    Reply
  • thesyndrome
    I guess the message Sony and Studio Canal are trying to send is: "never purchase digital media from us ever again"
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    thesyndrome said:
    I guess the message Sony and Studio Canal are trying to send is: "never purchase digital media from us ever again"
    If you don't get a download button you are not buying anything...
    if you buy something from a STREAMING SERVICE then...well, connect the dots, you are buying a service, if people are confused on what service they are buying let me restate STREAMING SERVICE, you are buying a service that allows you to stream something.
    Reply
  • warezme
    chaos215bar2 said:
    If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

    All this action by Sony does is prove for the umpteenth time that piracy is 100% morally justifiable. Until the law protects consumers from predatory corporations who would allow their customers to "purchase" a product only to change the terms or unilaterally delete it at a later point, there is zero reason anyone should feel obligated to pay for the content being produced and distributed by a company like Sony.

    So go ahead, pirate content owned or produced by Sony Pictures or Sony BMG and subsidiaries to your heart's content. Just be smart about it so you don't get caught. It's the only morally right thing to do.
    amen
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    I agree, this is bad, but the AI writing in this article offends me more.
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    bit_user said:
    Well... if you read the fine print, then it probably says in there that the access is revocable. I'm sure this sort of thing has happened with online game purchases. I know for a fact that it's happened with e-books.

    If I bought something and lost access to it, before I could watch it, I'd be pretty annoyed. However, do you really expect to own it like forever? I think nothing in the cloud is truly forever.

    Even if we're talking about physical media, pressed discs degrade. So, at a certain point, they might become unplayable. VHS tapes and Laserdiscs also degrade.

    It just seems to me that nothing is really and truly forever.
    That’s exactly why I say you have to assert ownership where you can. If the media matters to you, make your legally justified backups while you still can, because once the vendor pulls the plug, you are stuck. I used to be able to back up Kindle books and move them around, but Amazon has narrowed that path a lot over time. Same with Blu-rays, I have those backed up and can stream them through Jellyfin on whatever device I want. The problem is the window for real ownership keeps getting smaller, and more and more we are just leasing content until a company changes its mind.
    Reply