Breaking News: R18 Permanently Closing!

Published : September 21st, 2022 Written by Oppaira

Over the past few months we've seen a myriad of issues over at R18, and now finally those issues have come to a head: R18 will be permanently closing down. That's right, effective this week they will stop selling content and effective early next year they will be permanently gone. This will include users being unable to access previously purchased content. We saw them stop updating content several weeks ago and I think some people have feared the worst. Unfortunately it's the absolute worst case scenario now sad. Hopefully not too many of our readers are going to be out a hefty amount of money for porn they've purchased from them.

We recently wrote an article about this and theorized that adult billing and credit card companies were the culprit for it. That would make a lot of sense given the trend of those companies and what's happened recently at R18. First MC no longer being accepted, then a lot of questionable content disappearing, and now this. I've mentioned it before off handed but I think there's a pretty big mismatch between what the western world accepts in porn and what Japan accepts in porn. Censorship in JAV has always caused them to be creative, I mean we have live action tentacle porn for crying out loud! But seriously, I do think that the JAV industry never cared about what anyone thought about their content and it finally caught up to them. The kind of genres that the western world is trying to move away from are so commonplace in JAV and anyone really paying attention to what R18 was doing could tell they were on borrowed time. While studios are careful to make sure they're shooting with actresses who are above the age of consent and are explicitly giving consent, some of the content still rubs certain people the wrong way. I think a lot of fans of JAV are pretty open given what the industry produces.

R18 has been a major part of the industry for the nine years that they've been operating. While they might only be a small slice of the pie when you look at the western and domestic industries combined, R18 has been all some fans in the western side know. It's also been a big rallying location that has brought a lot of people together. People scouring the internet for whatever pittance of JAV they can find doesn't compare to when you finally discover R18 and what an incredible site it was. Full length videos from the manufacturer? English translated names and titles? As a western fan of JAV I don't know if I would even be here without how incredibly useful R18 has been for me. Being able to actually navigate what was out there, discover new content, and simply being able to understand everything was such a blessing.

R18 not only had their own news but interviews as well. Hell, some people might remember that seven years ago R18 brought us an AMA on reddit when they flew a few names to AVN in America. They actually did it twice, flying over quite the crowd the first time and just a handful of the best the second time. If heaven exists that seat was literally it, being surrounded by four of my all-time favourite actresses.

I think the obvious unspoken bit is that a certain 3-letter Japanese conglomerate doesn't care about its western fans whatsoever; we're not even an afterthought, we're far less than that. There are plenty of readers who have collections on R18 that they're losing and it's a shame that the industry is going down that path. I've always considered it a bit of a positive feedback loop that the more the industry moves away from providing legitimate sources for international fans, the more those fans have to seek less than ideal ways to view things, and the more that happens the more the industry feels incentivized to disregard the market. It's maybe not as bad when you've got Faleno's site, SOD's site, mgstage, DMM (Fanza), etc. as a Japanese person because at least you understand what you're navigating through. Going through DMM and others as a foreigner is not really that fun, believe me. R18 was really such a blessing for us foreign fans and I doubt many people are interested in navigating abroad. DMM has already hinted at pushing further away from the international market by restricting content on their site if you've got a foreign IP. Thankfully getting a VPN can get you around this but it's certainly annoying to have to do and speaks more about how little they care for us.

So what do western fans have as options going forward? Well besides the obvious there are still a few places. SexLikeReal offers VR JAV and they've got far more than anyone would have guessed. There's also ZENRA itself, which believe it or not we sell DRM-free downloadable JAV, with English subtitles too! There's also various studios both censored and uncensored that are particularly kind to foreigners with English websites. It might not be the same stuff you're already used to but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Going forward with the sales report I'll be stopping the R18 side of it. It sucks but there's not really much that I can do about it. I do still have last year's yearly sales report, which is a bit ironic that it's going to come out after this announcement, but that and perhaps next month's sales report are all that I'll have before I call it quits on the R18 side.

I'm sure it hasn't hit me yet just how awful this is and we'll see how things go in six months time when R18 ceases to exist. It's like the Hitomi retirement where the impact is only felt after you start missing what you once had. Will R18 figure out their problems? Will another company rise up and take their place? All I can hope is that Japan doesn't shutter its JAV doors to the outside world as they have in other ways recently because I'm such a fan of the industry and I just want to enjoy this like everyone else. I'm definitely going to miss their site, that's for sure. Still, at least there's our blog to keep you up to date on everything. With that I bid you farewell, until next time!

Comments


Jayson 1 year ago
The videos being downloaded from R18, will they be render useless when their site permanently closes down? If so, I will have to delete them from my hard drive to save some space.
ZENRA 1 year ago

That's what it seems like. We will know for sure next week!

Sekata 2 years ago
I got a total of 28 videos in my library, 23 of them are Hitomi Tanaka videos which includes Best Collection (4, 8, 16 and 24 hours compilation) and a few of her standalone videos. While the other 5 videos are also best collection videos, 3 Anri Okita, 1 Ruri Saijo and 1 Minako Komukai. Only important thing to me is Hitomi Tanaka,
AgentGustavo 2 years ago
I never bought anything that was priced for more than 6 or 7 US dollars, pretty much relying 100% on sales, and avoiding compilations, but I still end up with 1,000 full HD featured actress movies and 500 HQ VR movies, and 200 other movies of variety content, which is a weird total count because I didn't intend to get precise numbers, it just happened by coincidence when I stopped buying content because they wouldn't accept U.S. debit cards anymore. I just never liked the bitrate quality of other sites, so I wanted to get the content from the source, which makes this news like a big loss for me.

I have 500 Idea Pocket movies, 300 S1 No.1 Style movies, 150 SOD Create movies, 100 Prestige movies, and the rest are from other studios like Attackers, KM Produce, Moodyz, Hon Naka, Wanz Factory, Tameike Goro, Madonna, TeamZero, Kira*Kira, and Waap Entertainment.

The actresses I bought from are:

- Airi Kijima
- Tina Yuzuki
- An Tsujimoto
- Suzu Ichinose
- Erika Momotani
- Tsubasa Amami
- Jessica Kizaki
- Mayu Nozomi
- Mikako Abe
- Sora Shiina
- Kana Momonogi
- Yua Mikami
- Karen Kaede
- Marin Hinata
- Shuri Atomi
- Aika
- Riku Minato
- Monika Hasegawa
- Risa Morisawa
- Rora Takizawa
- Emiri
- Maika Kawanami
- Yurika Yuki
- Remu Suzumori
- Minami Kojima
- Tsukasa Aoi
- Riri Nanatsumori
- Suzu Honjo
- Ichika Nagano
- Yui Nagase
- Ichika Matsumoto
- Lala Kudo / Haru Ito
- Melody Hina Marks
- Lily Heart / Emma Lawrence
- Mia Kaede Cameron
- Mary Earheart
- Karina Nishida
- Kanon Kanade
- Mitsuki Nagisa
- Rena Aoi

I started buying since the site's launch, so I was able to secure many titles that were later unavailable, and others removed, so I end up building a very decent selection, which makes the site's close suck even more.

What's worst is that there is only less than a month to be able to rent any movies, and it is impossible to get new VR content by any means since those are not for rent. It is a big loss indeed.
ZENRA 2 years ago

For VR at least (outside of DMM studios), SLR is pretty much at the point now where it has everything R18 had and then some.

AgentGustavo 2 years ago
I'm going to need to check it out then. Thanks for the info. I'm surprised they announced that the accounts will remain open even after the site is down, maybe because they are linked to DMM, but your library won't transfer to FANZA.

I imagine that in the best case they are holding on to the accounts after the close because they have hope that someday they will reopen? who knows?

I never understood why they stopped allowing U.S. payments right around the time sanctions were issued to Russia, it didn't make any sense to me because that's a different country. I also don't know if the site's close is related to the new laws in Japan that are threatening to ban sex from JAV, or the new laws that say movies need to stop selling once the actress retires. All of this is very strange to me.
ZENRA 2 years ago

I can say with an extreme amount of confidence that legislation here, there, or anywhere had nothing to do with R18's current situation. If anything, given how R18's database is essentially piggybacking off of DMM's, a title removed from DMM due to an actress request should be removed from R18 at the same time. I wasn't aware that accounts were going to remain in some sort of limbo post-closure. This is a good thing as I am sure all data is being saved somewhere so there remains a chance movies will be accessible after all (don't quote me on this).

drk 2 years ago
Re: DMM account not closing. I guess that when you create the c**ld account (R18), it also creates a parent (DMM) account at the same time, and now the xxxxx one will get put on ice /deleted.
mojave91 2 years ago
now even cannot rent the 7 days from r18 anymore? what a bummer
YongQing 2 years ago
I don't understand. Couldn't they have gone with crypto payments?
ZENRA 2 years ago

Totally. Among other types of alternative payments, credit cards, etc. As I noted on Twitter, this is more Jonestown for one specific site than anything industry-wide.

L 2 years ago
I spent over $3000 on this website. Can all users file a combined complaint againt the company?
ZENRA 2 years ago

The only thing I can suggest is getting in touch with Japanese media to let them know about the situation.

HornyOrgan 2 years ago
So very upsetting. And I think it may be worse than anyone thinks: will the players that you need to play the r18 movies still play the content if they can't get back to their servers to verify the email address on the account?
ZENRA 2 years ago

As it stands now, the movies will stop playing come the end of January.

Kalbo 2 years ago
I have over 800 movies which cost a small fortune. I found the Japanese porn much sexier than American porn, the ladies seem to fulfil all our fantasies. Its a major blow to lose this much money. I feel R18.COM needs to find a solution for its members to be able to download a conversion player that could work with VPN for example. Or pay a company with funds we gave them to set up a player for downloaded vids. Considering the money myself and many others spent with them they have to do this. They need to be honourable and do what is right.
ZENRA 2 years ago

You spent between $2400USD and $16,000USD at R18 if my calculations are correct. I agree this is not the way to go around it. I also believe given the time-frame and that the company itself is certainly not going out of business, there is a decent chance they will find a way for users to continue to access their content.

Gusssss 2 years ago
I have 200+ titles in my library. How many chance I am gonna lose all of them for good? :((
Anything we can do to keep the titles?
ZENRA 2 years ago

I think the best way to make this a known issue is to let Japanese media know that such a large company is depriving people of their bought content over many years with such short notice.

drk 2 years ago
Btw, could you update your studio list? Celeb no Tomo sells movies from their homepage (As far as I can tell plain .mp4s but 30 days to download), so a link to their homepage might as well be in the 'watch' section
ZENRA 2 years ago

It seems we already link it via the logo.

drk 2 years ago
Yes, but it's not explicitly clear that they sell their stuff by themselves. Minor addition to the description, maybe?
ukmuscat 2 years ago
Absolutely gutted about this but I shouldn't have been surprised. I remember when they shut down the English version of DMM before setting up r18 and I lost all the titles I had purchased there. I've lost 200+ movies now and I don't think I'll be buying ever again in future. I might be in a minority but I enjoyed the high quality video that r18 offered, especially the recent addition of 4K movies.
ZENRA 2 years ago

I have met with many studios and have yet to find a single one that has what one would consider 'very favorable' views of this company.

drk 2 years ago
Are studios/ actresses/ talent agencies aware of what a big favour DMM is about to do them with regards to overseas users? USA/Europe might not be much, but the tours to Taiwan / Hong Kong / Korea might get a bit frostier.
ZENRA 2 years ago

Well, R18 has been effectively unusable for months, but I am sure the studios may release it eventually.

drk 2 years ago
Blocking new purchases is vastly different from dispossessing users of existing works, because a front-end (That's all R18 is) shuts down. I personally if I had to 'just' move to DMM for new content, it would be a minor bother but oh well, current development is not that.
LRB1983 2 years ago
I’m going to lose all my 83 purchased movies.
I feel stolen. This awful message send by the industry makes me consider sail the seven seas. Terrible news. And as you said fanza started geoblocking new releases. Only appear some old titles but many new titles does not.
ZENRA 2 years ago

Another commenter here noted that in spite of shutting down, HerHers DRM-locked movies still play fine. If they can do it, anyone can do it.

E 2 years ago
Was using DMM when R18 stopped updating, but I am 100% done paying for anything now. They've completely lost all reliability by blocking people from accessing downloaded content they paid for, and I'm tired of jumping through hoops.
ZENRA 2 years ago

Our site is DRM-free you know. :)

printer 2 years ago
I stopped buying R18 videos when they required an in-house video player for their content. This short-sighted move was the final straw. Now, I only use R18 for reference and historical content.
ZENRA 2 years ago

I could've sworn R18 always required usage of their player?

drk 2 years ago
What do you think are the odds of a partial u-turn and an authentication server being left alive?
ZENRA 2 years ago

65%.

drk 2 years ago
I guess I like these odds. I think I'll buy Celeb no Tomo stuff directly from them - they do a lot with Yui Hatano. They seem to sell plain .mp4s from their website. SOD DMM. Btw, their movies might be a good fight for your website, quite a few 'odd'-'funny' movies.
RK-IV 2 years ago
My 853 Titles could down the drain... T_T. I hope DRM removal is easy.
ordyskans 2 years ago
Oh wow, that's crazy. I thought it was april 1st for a second when I saw this headline. Well, I'm kinda glad I only ever bought 4 or 5 movies on there during a sale. The thing is, I might have ended up spending so much money on R18 if they had allowed VR movies to be downloaded but they never did as far as I can tell, which was a big no no for me.
Mesper 1 year ago
Yeah same, I kept naively coming back to the site to see if they added the option to download VR videos but they never did. Bummer, their player sucks. Er, sucked.
drk 2 years ago
The worst part is DMM cunts pulling the plug completely. For me 586 movies and 660k yen. (Out which dmm took 462ish leaving the studios with 198ish).

If at least they kept R18 alive to validate old content, it would have been fair enough. Migrating to dmm would be good (and technically rather simple). But these nonces chose the worst course of action, acceptable only if the entire dmm platform went down.
ZENRA 2 years ago

And then what is stopping them from deleting all accounts tied with a foreign credit card down the line? This is frustrating development as it is hard to imagine a simple authenticating server remaining online would cost much money.

drk 2 years ago
It's the loss of trust and absolute lack of good will. When HerHers shut off in March, their movies were still accessible offline. Just opened a few of them ouf of curiosity and they worked - and it was a permadeath of the entire company. Here it's a frontend shutting down. AFAIK the only way to buy now from DMM as an overseas user is via gift cards you buy yourself on Japanese amazon.
ZENRA 2 years ago

The 'loss of trust and absolute lack of good will' is a huge issue I have with this as it can hurt foreigners trust of JAV including our own site. The site going down and people losing the ability to watch their content in spite of the parent company being very much in the black is very bad optics.

drk 2 years ago
You are a different case, as if you are DRM-free and if you go down, you go down. No fallback 'ZENRA for true users only' sites that are a carbon copy of the one going down. Btw, do you plan to plan to talk about these developments when talking with studios/talent agencies (for licencing new movies or w/e reasons)?
Jin 2 years ago
Do you guys think it will be possible that a 3rd party video player can be developed just to play .dcv files?

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