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Vuze BitTorrent Client Closes Porn Torrent Site

BitTorrent and adult entertainment go hand in hand, which is one of the reasons why the Vuze BitTorrent client introduced a paid erotica section last year. However, the project turned out to be a quickie and has been canceled due to a lack of traction among Vuze users.

Owned and operated by Vuze Inc., StudioHD was silently integrated into the Vuze client last year. Once the user had signed up for a subscription costing $24.99 for a month or $149.99 annually, the service offered hundreds of high definition videos that could be downloaded using BitTorrent .

The project was supposed to generate a healthy revenue stream to support the company in tough economic times. A few months later, however, the project has been canceled and the site closed, as the company focuses on other ways of satisfying its users.

“Over the past six months, we prioritized our projects to focus development on features that were gaining significant traction with our community. As part of this prioritization, StudioHD was closed in November,” a spokesman at Vuze told TorrentFreak.

Vuze’s defunct adult entertainment network

vuze

Although Vuze officially claims that the closure of StudioHD is a matter of changed priorities, we assume that it was not as profitable as the company had projected. This is not really a big surprise, as even the ‘free’ adult torrent sites are having trouble keeping up with the increasing popularity of adult video streaming sites.

The Vuze spokesman told TorrentFreak that the company will instead focus on integrating devices and torrent search capabilities into its client.

“Almost half our active community use Vuze Device integrations to watch their media on screens other than their computers (iPhone, iPod, PS3, Xbox 360 etc). They’ve successfully transferred more than 50m files to other screens since launch last March.”

In addition to the successful device integration, the built-in search capabilities using existing torrent sites such as isoHunt and BTjunkie, has gained in use significantly. Three quarter of all Vuze users are searching for torrents using the feature, compared to 55% a year ago.

Ironically, this integrated search allows users to find thousands of adult torrents that can be downloaded for free. No paid subscription needed. Could that be one of the reasons why the StudioHD subscription service was canceled?

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  • http://www.eZee.se www.eZee.se

    “turned out be be a quickie and has been canceled due to a lack of traction…. ”

    Ok, call me immature but I laughed :))

    Nice play of words TF!

  • Vuze user

    Part of the first paragraph reads, “the project turned out be be a quickie.” Watch your editing guys! I think it should say “the project turned out to be a quickie.”

    [Thanks, fixed it - TF]

  • Anonymous

    @eZee

    Hehe, good point.

    On-topic: Considering the amount of free porn out there, both legit and pirated, I’m not surprised that this went under. It’s kind of difficult to compete with free, after all… as many of us pirates know. ;)

  • Phil

    Well done to Vuze.

  • Mehz

    LOL , who would pay 149 euro for porn seriously??

  • Chuck

    So.. what happens to all the people that actually paid for it? (If any) They get screwed?

  • rawr

    of course number 5

    but thus is the fate of anyone dumb enough to pay for porn

    …or use vuze for that matter…

  • Joe Bob

    That’s at least a way to get investment return :D

    BTW Paid porn is still the lead user of new technologies (now 3D). So most people must still be paying for it.

  • mike

    Don’t you find it sort of ironic that one of the biggest Bit-torrent clients, whos use is to allow people to share media for free, tried to generate profit by selling media to people. Really? Lol.

  • Justin Timbodu

    What a bummer man, we lose yet another one. Will it ever stop.

    Justin

  • Natalie

    i dont understand why boys still like porn when they can get it from their girlfriends for free. all they have to do is ask xxx

  • Greg

    @Natalie

    And if your woman has no libido?

    Porn has uses.

  • Ash

    Hey, why don’t you tell people about great news about new ratio cheat for linux and macos? Torrent Ratio Keeper released free linux version. Wepeee!
    It will a strike for private trackers, but many linux and macos users now can cheat and no need for wine or mono shit.

  • lols

    #8 rofl sure

  • h33t

    cannibalisation of services (e.g. free competing with paid) is not the issue because it is ecomomical good sense to segment the market between those who:

    a. cant/wont pay
    b. try before they buy
    c. can/will pay

    the issue with marketing new porn services is the market is saturated with established quality services for all segments with which new entrants must show significant differentiation of services to gain any competitive edgee e.g. Vuze’s syndication offering of same old vanilla porn just doesnt get anyone excited. this is the big issue with the old school content syndication model, it just wont work on the net because it is too easy for consumers to go direct to source or take substitutes. even when you have a huge captive following the size of Vuze’s user base it makes no difference because the tool (the technology) does not in any sense define the content and the decisions made by users

    if Vuze had invested in the production and distribution of fresh new content with a distinctive twist that made it interesting then they would have had half a chance to make revenue. it is no surprise that after the tragedy of what Vuze did to Azureus that they are still making elementary mistakes in their marketing and revenue models. i have said it before and i say again, Vuze you need to either fire your marketing head or recruit a professional because it is now 3 years that you have been pissing away your market equity

    http://www.h33t.com is eagerly awaiting the new series of Survivor, it should be a goody

  • Anonymous

    Meh sounded like a load of wank anyway.

  • Hom3r

    Professional porn generally sucks anyway.

  • JAV FTW!!!

    Nothing beats Japanese porn anyway being censored or uncensored, even the censored one are better than most.

  • Jay

    Now with technology as pervasive as it is, professional porn is being invaded by young hornballs that film themselves and post it up for the world to see. For free!

    Porn just isn’t as profitable as it used to be because of this. If I had the choice to jerk off to a plastic sex Goddess for a price, or the slightly less pretty girl-next-door for free, I would go with the latter and then just move on with my day.

    I’m surprised the entire porn-video industry hasn’t simply crumbled to dust by now.

  • Aaron

    In other news, Vuze developers are no longer being forced to sleep on the couch every night by their angry wives.

  • dwpbike

    i wanted to be in japanese porn, but getting your pecker pixelatted is too painful

  • freebird

    pornhub and empflix
    nuff said

  • Anonymous

    So how does the Vuze folks track what we do with the files after they’re done downloading them?

  • Anonymous

    Porn is in a downward spiral to oblivion, over saturation and exposure.Why pay when you can get it for free from hundreds of sites?

    I would like to know whose the genius who thought this up? The person deserves a fatal beating!

  • your son

    your son loves free porn

  • Anonymous

    Anyone who pays for porn is an idiot!

  • Obedient

    WHY would anyone pay to get porn when they could get it for free???
    It is available all over torrent sites!

  • chicken snake

    yes i have supported the local flick shop enough i paid about like $900 to porn so far and i think that’s enough. I now download me porn from emule.

  • chicken snake

    i will however support the local strip clubs sometimes as long as they are not too expensive and purchase some fake pus s i es from the flick shop. Hope that helps.

  • Anonymous

    I use Vuze for dling my torrents but I don’t use the UI interface that displays 3.x or higher. Its the older interface that all it gives me is my torrents and my options. I don’t need all that extra HD stream, Vuze media website bs. Its a waste of my time. To be honest I never even really knew that Vuze had this in their program, cause I never used anything on Vuze aside from managing my torrents.

  • rnr

    sure is alot of porn related news on torrentfreak. me likey :D

  • Optix

    Should of just made it free but with a fuckton of Ads. Sure it would have of had some traction then.,

  • bootytape.com

    It’s not dumb to pay for porn that’s rare and that meets your needs. Also people pay for porn because not every piece of adult content on the net can be site ripped and given for free. At http://www.bootytape.com (free adult torrent site) we deal with more amateur content because too much mainstream isn’t good for anyone. A lot of torrent sites love the mainstream because of there flashy covers and standardized file sizes. We don’t follow that path and I’m sure Studio HD had to follow the mainstream path and because of that didn’t end up giving the most exclusive content they possible could give.

  • nah in bmore

    It was kinda of dumb to try to move in on porn. Seriously, unless you are obsessed I dont see how anyone could really be that much into porn. It takes like 30 seconds to whack….theres tons of clips out there that are longer than that… mainstream porn has realized this such as limiting views to only 5 times a day…

    heck most of the content in mainstream porn is a bunch of extraneous talking like “yea baby shake that @%%, let me see you lick them tittays”, etc…. most of that crap is probrably fast forwarded thru anyhow. If your going to do it, at least try to focus on a niche.

  • Luvhandler

    What Ernesto failed to mention (of which I wrote to him about weeks ago) was that the whole Vuze HD network was cannibalized, the free Music Video HD content gone and replaced by supposedly “legal” content. It makes a bit more sense now if the reason was more financial, at that time no one was saying anything at Vuze. Thanks to this article, at least we know more.

  • phineas

    they cant make money from porn? what a bunch of noobs..

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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