R18.com is closing down for good

R18.com, one of the most popular English (and Chinese) websites to purchase Japanese adult videos, has just announced that they will be closing down for good.

The announcement was published on the homepage of R18.com, which reads the following:

Notice of R18.com Closure
After 9 years of helping people discover and share great contents,
R18.com will stop selling content from October 24, 2022. From this date, users will have access to their already purchased content only.
A few months later, from January 31, 2023 the site will be completely closed and accessing purchased content will not be possible.
Note that it is possible that the points refund application and website may close before the due date due to unexpected reasons.
If you have unused purchased points and would like to get a refund,
please use the points refund form for requesting the purchased points refund.
Points refund form:https://www.r18.com/my/refund/
For any questions, please refer to the FAQ as follows.
FAQ: https://www.r18.com/info/faq/
Contact: https://www.r18.com/my/contact/
We are proud of the community that rallied around R18.com and we know many of you will be sad to see it go.
All the best from the R18.com team, and may you always find what you are looking for.
we'll miss it dearly…

R18.com's closure is a surprise, yet not a surprise

While this notice came as a surprise to many, a handful of JAV enthusiasts were speculating that the site would eventually close down due to the billing problems it was facing since March 2022.

In March, the site stopped accepting PayPal as a payment method, followed by the complete removal of all credit card payment options entirely.

Users can still buy Japanese adult videos on the Japanese website

Despite R18.com's impending closure, users are still able to purchase movies directly from DMM.com (the parent website), though they would need to do some extra work of translating the website from Japanese to English to make their purchases.

As of now, DMM.com still accepts payments via most Japanese payment methods, including Visa and PayPal for DMM points.