Worth reading this one carefully before the pitchforks come out, because it is a single reported customer and not a mass deletion. A Reddit user says the Extended Edition Lord of the Rings trilogy they bought through the Google Play Store in 2022 vanished from their library. The screenshots they posted show support telling them the title had been pulled from the catalog, and that Google could neither restore access nor issue a refund.
The part that should bother people is not the one account. It is that Google's own terms already describe this outcome. Buying gives you a non exclusive right to access the content, and that access holds only as long as Google keeps the right to provide it. If a licensing deal lapses, the button you pressed four years ago does not protect you. Nothing broke here. The system did exactly what it says on the page nobody reads.
I am not about to pretend I am rebuilding a disc wall. I stream most things too. But this is the argument for keeping the films you genuinely care about on a shelf, and it has nothing to do with bitrate, even though 4K UHD wins that fight as well. A disc does not care whether a studio and a storefront are still on speaking terms.
The same logic runs through Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL and Qobuz, except there nobody pretends to be selling you a copy. A subscription is at least honest about what it is.
So, for the disc holdouts here: which specific titles did you buy physically because you did not trust the licence to survive?
The part that should bother people is not the one account. It is that Google's own terms already describe this outcome. Buying gives you a non exclusive right to access the content, and that access holds only as long as Google keeps the right to provide it. If a licensing deal lapses, the button you pressed four years ago does not protect you. Nothing broke here. The system did exactly what it says on the page nobody reads.
I am not about to pretend I am rebuilding a disc wall. I stream most things too. But this is the argument for keeping the films you genuinely care about on a shelf, and it has nothing to do with bitrate, even though 4K UHD wins that fight as well. A disc does not care whether a studio and a storefront are still on speaking terms.
The same logic runs through Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL and Qobuz, except there nobody pretends to be selling you a copy. A subscription is at least honest about what it is.
So, for the disc holdouts here: which specific titles did you buy physically because you did not trust the licence to survive?
