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NEWS: Dark Horse Comic Closes Digital Service, Ends App Support




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Nionel



Joined: 08 Sep 2004
Posts: 390
Location: Nebraska
PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2025 6:25 pm Reply with quote
I feel sorry for anyone who put money into this app. The fact that they've outright said they can't guarantee you can access your content after a certain date is exactly why digital "ownership" is a scam.

Seeing that Embracer Group is now owner of Dark Horse doesn't give me much confidence in their future, which is a shame, Dark Horse is responsible for localizing some iconic manga over the years.
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Exodus007



Joined: 21 Sep 2012
Posts: 36
PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2025 7:59 pm Reply with quote
Exactly. "In the same FAQ, Dark Horse states that, technically, users do not own the comics in their bookshelves." This is just proof of the giant FU the digital service industry truly is.

I only buy Dark Horse for physical.
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Triltaison



Joined: 03 Jul 2011
Posts: 824
PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2025 6:06 am Reply with quote
I'm honestly pretty worried about Dark Horse right now. Some of their upcoming manga releases have suddenly been quietly erased from store fronts or just delayed last minute. But some product entries aren't updated to show as being delayed or having a publishing date pushed back... the product entries are outright removed entirely. I saw people remarking on it in various places immediately after this digital news dropped.

Gunsmith Cats was supposed to come out in February and got delayed to March. That one was probably because of the layoffs in February, but it isn't March just yet. Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service omnibus 6 was supposed to come out in March (after volume 5 came out in 2022), but the product was entirely removed from Amazon, B&N, CR, and such. Something's going on over there.
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Akcoll99



Joined: 28 Feb 2011
Posts: 296
PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2025 8:55 am Reply with quote
Triltaison wrote:
I'm honestly pretty worried about Dark Horse right now. Some of their upcoming manga releases have suddenly been quietly erased from store fronts or just delayed last minute. But some product entries aren't updated to show as being delayed or having a publishing date pushed back... the product entries are outright removed entirely. I saw people remarking on it in various places immediately after this digital news dropped.

Gunsmith Cats was supposed to come out in February and got delayed to March. That one was probably because of the layoffs in February, but it isn't March just yet. Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service omnibus 6 was supposed to come out in March (after volume 5 came out in 2022), but the product was entirely removed from Amazon, B&N, CR, and such. Something's going on over there.


Same. They seem to be keeping up with some things, like the Warren Magazine softcover collections and the Richard Corben Library hardcovers. But some of the other titles, especially their manga, have been falling way behind schedule.

The Kurosagi CDS Omnibus dropping off the schedule completely is very worrying. I'm also anxious to see if we ever get the sequel series to Innocent as well.

Does anyone know if their manga department was hit harder than some others during the cutbacks?
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TarsTarkas



Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 6001
Location: Virginia, United States
PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2025 9:13 am Reply with quote
Digital ownership is not a scam, naturally you are using their service to have the books delivered to you digitally. So when that service fails due to insolvency or other financial factors it is only natural that you cannot back up from that. When you own physical books, you must take care of them. Protect them from humidity, from insects, properly store them, and other damage vectors. It is the same with digital books, back-up, back-up and back-up. Digital libraries can get corrupted, digital books can mysteriously disappear, and other problems can pop up. Put your digital libraries on your smart phone, on your laptop, and put them on multiple external hard drives.

Digital book providers have to say you don't own the game or book, because otherwise people will just provide copies to their friends or put them up on a torrent site, just because. You know that will happen.

Practically, though, once the digital book is on your media, your laptop, your HDD and SD, it can't be taken away. And just like physical books, you are responsible for its care and storage.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 6449
PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2025 10:18 am Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:

Practically, though, once the digital book is on your media, your laptop, your HDD and SD, it can't be taken away.


Well provided your computer’s Hard Drive doesn’t decide to randomly fail or become corrupted through no fault of your own.
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JuJuBee



Joined: 30 Jan 2023
Posts: 4
PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2025 11:22 am Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:
Digital ownership is not a scam, naturally you are using their service to have the books delivered to you digitally....
....Practically, though, once the digital book is on your media, your laptop, your HDD and SD, it can't be taken away. And just like physical books, you are responsible for its care and storage.


I can't say for certain since I haven't used Dark Horse's digital platform, but from the article it talks about logging in to access a user's library. I read that to mean that users aren't able to download their copies and store it on their devices, they would have to log into their account each time to read.
Can any users confirm whether they were able to download their library to their device? That would certainly make the shutdown much less painful for users, but I would guess that when the service goes down, all the purchased content goes away.
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Glordit



Joined: 11 Sep 2020
Posts: 716
PostPosted: Wed Feb 26, 2025 11:35 am Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:
Practically, though, once the digital book is on your media, your laptop, your HDD and SD, it can't be taken away. And just like physical books, you are responsible for its care and storage.


That's where DRM comes in and ruins the fun. Can't access the authentication server? Can't access your data.
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