The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has confirmed the termination of AnimePlay, a prominent anime streaming platform boasting over 5 million users.
ACE operates with the support of more than 50 leading television networks and film studios, such as Disney, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, Netflix, and Universal Pictures. Its primary objective is to eliminate unauthorized streaming services through various means, including civil litigation, criminal referrals, and cease-and-desist measures.
In recent years, ACE has successfully targeted and dismantled numerous large-scale illegal streaming networks in coordinated efforts with law enforcement agencies. Most notably, in November 2025, ACE concluded operations against Photocall, a significant TV piracy platform servicing more than 26 million users annually.
In this latest initiative, the anti-piracy coalition dismantled AnimePlay, which featured over 60 terabytes of anime content, including TV shows and movies, and attracted upwards of 5 million registered users, predominantly from Indonesia.
ACE assumed control of the AnimePlay application and proceeded to take all operational infrastructure offline, encompassing hosting servers and web domains.
"ACE secured control of not just the application, but also its underlying infrastructure, including 15 associated domains, source code, hosting environment, and related digital assets, all of which have now been taken offline," stated ACE in a press release on Thursday. "This decisive action has effectively dismantled the operation and curtailed the operator’s capability to reconstruct or relaunch the service."
Additionally, the developer and administrator of the piracy service relinquished control of the backend ecosystem supporting AnimePlay to ACE. This transfer included backend servers, associated databases, advertising tools, and 29 GitHub repositories containing the complete source code.
"We will continue working with our partners across the Asia Pacific region and globally to dismantle criminal operations like this and safeguard the integrity of the creative economy," remarked Larissa Knapp, Chief Content Protection Officer and Executive Vice President for the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
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