Today several users reported that a handful of significant Cartoon Network shows—including Ben 10, Steven Universe, Regular Show, the 2016 Powerpuff Girls revival, Amazing World of Gumball, We Bare Bears, and Chowder—were suddenly no longer streaming on Max with the turn of the month, with no prior announcement of their impending removal.

Just removing Steven Universe alone seems insane to me. I’m not into it, but it has a massive fan base.

  • Omega@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    From my understanding, Max has to pay every time the show is viewed. So there’s a calculation they have, how many subscribers will they lose by removing it?

    For reference, they removed Westworld.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      It’s too bad they couldn’t pay a certain amount in one lump sum to produce a limited number of, say, small physical discs that play video for people to buy more often.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      But… wouldn’t that “take up” the views of other shows?

      In other words, the consumer has X amount of time for HBO Max, so they’d either be paying for more views on another show or a potential lost subscriber who can’t find anything to watch, right?

      And, with all due respect, there’s no way cartoons are more expensive-per-view than other shows.

      • Omega@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Ideally they would subscribe and then watch a different service. Or maybe a different cartoon is cheaper per view. Or maybe it’s a retroactive contract negotiation tactic. Basically negotiate or you won’t get any residuals.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Ideally they would subscribe and then watch a different service.

          Thats so cynical and self defeating. “They’ll use our competition and save us money.” But you’re not wrong, they could totally be thinking that rofl.

          Or maybe it’s a retroactive contract negotiation tactic. Basically negotiate or you won’t get any residuals.

          Very possible. I guess all that is even more behind-the-curtain than cable, as when shows disappear there is no reason given, no “protest” like some channels will do.

          I feel like streaming has made all this stuff even more opaque.

    • David_Eight@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Max pays who? Warmer Bros owns both Max and Cartoon Network. Are they legit paying themselves, that’s so stupid it must be true.

      • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        I mean, in a large company, that is often how things are done.
        Departments have their own budgets and pay each other to work on various projects.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      But your home server’s drive can malfunction and then you’re stuck. Unless you make regular backups I guess.

      • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        RAID1 is cheap. It’s not a fool proof solution but has saved my Plex library a couple times over the years.

        • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Hell, raid 5 isn’t that expensive. 4 bay enclosure with some drives and your set.

          You can even run most of your services on them if you choose wisely. I run all of my arr apps on my NAS along with the torrent client. I use a little SFF PC as my Plex server for the extra power to transcode.

      • Raglesnarf@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I do have a backup! I just use 4 HDD in raid 1, two separate data pools. so far works great, I’d love to upgrade them from 8tb to 16th one day but for my needs I’m ok for now

        • BlackAura@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          If you aren’t doing more you have a parity drive, not backups, to be clear.

          If a drive fails you can resilver and your data is fine.

          If someone with write/delete access makes a mistake and deletes everything, or ransomware encrypt all your files, you can’t just “restore from last week’s backup” because you don’t have one.

  • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Just recently I finally convinced my wife to watch Venture Bros. I watched it on Max a couple years ago and enjoyed it, but I hadn’t gotten the chance to watch the movie. So I was hoping we could watch the series together and finish off with the movie.

    The movie is on Max, but the show is not anymore. The first 3 seasons are on Netflix. Seasons 4-7… They don’t seem to be available anywhere. Well, I think Adult Swim’s website might have it but their website sucks for binging shows even on a desktop, and either worse or literally not possible to use on other devices. I could “buy” them digitally on Amazon. Instead I just bought the DVD collection and added it to my Jellyfin server.

    It used to be that a show had to be really special for me to shell out money and dedicate digital and physical storage space for me to buy a physical copy. But more and more I find myself buying the DVD’s and Blu-Rays even for shows like Venture Bros that I like, but may not love. Streaming just keeps getting worse.

    • scala@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      That show is fantastic! I wish they fleshed out the ending a bit more instead of a movie. If they had one more season to give it a proper ending would be chef’s kiss. Still one of the best Western animations ever made.

  • cybervseas@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Max is notoriously capricious. If I remember correctly, they have a terrible reputation with animation on their platform.

    In a sense I’m surprised these cartoons remained on there as long as they did.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Reminds me of WhatCulture’s video yesterday on 10 great shows that you cannot stream anywhere:

    https://youtu.be/BHb511kO6VA

    There are several HBO Max cartoons on there.

    Time to sail the seas to preserve artwork.

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Slightly less click baity than WatchMojo. I enjoy their presenters and I get a rundown of lesser known movies. I have watched a few WatchMojo videos and the presenters seem a bit stale.

    • Myxomatosis@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      And these clowns wonder why people pirate shit. There’s a subscription for everything now and they still limit what content you can watch.

  • Myxomatosis@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    It’s not a cartoon but I still don’t understand why I can’t watch episodes of Tales From the Crypt on Max. It was an HBO show.

    • latesleeper@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The World According to Jeff Goldblum was a show made by and for Disney+. They deleted it for tax purposes. There is no legal way to watch the show now. Completely gone.

      • monotremata
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        1 month ago

        Same with The Mysterious Benedict Society. I did find a site that would sell it to me on a disc, but once I received it, it became clear to me they didn’t actually have a license to do so and just sold me a bootleg. Oh well. I dunno why Disney just didn’t want my money in the first place.

        • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          They are now quite a bit dated unfortunately First and last seasons are not great, but there are some good ones in there still. It’s just not how I remembered them back in the 90s. Still worth a watch.

          • Myxomatosis@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I’ve watched a few on YouTube and the quality isn’t great. The shock and gore is still there though. Some of those episodes left me scarred as a kid.

          • sarcasticsunrise@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            What??? Season 1 is still great! Just watched the Lea Thompson episode “Only Sin Deep” last night. The show is timeless imo

            -but also, yeah just buy the series, it’s so worth it

            • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              For me, the first season was them finding their way. The ones after were much better, imo. Better stories, better budget.

              Could hardly watch the later shows that were in England.

  • randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    If they have old shows you like they can’t sell you new shows.

    It’s all artificial scarcity, just ask the millions of people pirating content.

  • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    I must be old. Getting high and watching Power Puff Girls was a lot of fun when it was new. But everyone is talking about Steven Universe, and I have no idea what that is.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    “io9 has reached out to Max for comment and clarification on the removal, and whether or not the departures were intentional updates to Max’s catalogue or if, like the recent situation with Over the Garden Wall on Hulu, an oversight that will be corrected.”

    Artwork doesn’t re-Photoshop itself accidentally. This was all intentional.