[UPDATED] Falcon Studios And NextDoor Announce Reduction In Scene Updates Amid Coronavirus, Give Members Free “Gaycest” Videos Instead
This story has been updated below.
As expected, more gay porn studios have announced a reduction in scene updates amid the coronavirus pandemic, which is expected to kill anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 Americans over the next eight weeks. While they have “months of exclusive content in inventory,” gay porn studios Falcon, Raging Stallion, Hot House, NextDoorStudios, and ActiveDuty have told members that they’ll be “spacing out” their scene releases for an undetermined amount of time, as explained in the message below. Note: Falcon/Raging/Hot House are owned by conglomerate AEBN and NextDoor/ActiveDuty are owned by Canadian conglomerate Gamma, but all of the studios’ content management and distribution online is operated by BuddyProfits, hence this same message is appearing on all of the studios’ websites:
A Message to Our Community
While we are all facing this once in a lifetime pandemic with COVID19, we wanted to share our efforts to keep everyone safe and “flatten the curve”. Content production has been halted to maintain the health and safety of performers and crew while employees are working from home following recommendations of national, state and local authorities. Good news is that we have months of exclusive content in inventory! In order to be in solid shape until we can start shooting again, we’ve decided to space out these releases a little bit. While we do this we are working on new content initiatives so you always have fresh videos to enjoy. The first initiative is an exciting collaboration with many of the top adult brands to offer a variety of video updates free to members to complement our exclusive content updates.
The “free” video updates aren’t clearly identified (and again, neither are the specifics as to how their new releases will be “spaced out”), but one free scene running on NextDoor right now is from incest-themed gay porn studio Gaycest:
Seeing a Gaycest scene on NextDoor is quite the coincidence, given that the owner of Gaycest, Legrand Wolf, recently took control of the domain of a competing incest studio he used to own, FamilyDick, and redirected all of the FamilyDick traffic to NextDoor’s incest site, NextDoorTaboo. As you’ll recall, this “hacking” story and FamilyDick traffic being redirected made headlines a couple months ago, but at this point in time, I have to admit that I simply don’t give a shit about this story right now. But, if you’re bored (and who isn’t?), here’s an arbitration summary detailing how and why Legrand Wolf retained control of the domains (which, incidentally, means that by redirecting FamilyDick links to NextDoor, cybersquatter Legrand Wolf essentially stole traffic and potential affiliate revenue from Str8UpGayPorn and every other porn news site that used FamilyDick ad links in their articles, so I’d bear that in mind if you’re an affiliate or advertiser thinking of promoting any of Wolf’s content at Gaycest or FunSizeBoys going forward).
Like Falcon, NextDoor, et al., Men and Sean Cody recently announced their own reductions in scene updates, and most other studios are likely to follow suit, whether they announce it publicly or not. The only studio that probably won’t have to space out their releases is BelAmi, given that they have over three years’ worth of unreleased content.
ActiveDuty only has one more scene set for release this month (again, more could be added once post-production is complete and the promo materials are ready), while Raging Hot Falcon has nine new scenes set to be released for the month of April. The first one coming tomorrow stars Devin Franco and Jesse Zeppelin:
UPDATE:
A Falcon Studios rep has told Str8Up today that the message Gamma placed on their sites about their updates being “spaced out” was incorrect, and Gamma has since removed that message. Here is the message that Falcon says should be running on their sites (which, again, are managed by Canadian conglomerate Gamma):
A Message to Our Community
We take the health of our performers, crew, and staff very seriously. In accordance with the recommendations of all national, state and local authorities, we have made the decision to temporarily halt production and have all of our employees work from home until further notice. But never fear! We are committed to providing you with the same seamless viewing experience you have come to expect from Falcon Studios. We will continue to update our membership site with new releases and exciting updates while we practice social distancing. To help manage time at home, we have a few ideas to help pass the time:
Create new playlists: we have over 4000 videos to keep you busy
Find your new virtual crush and binge his videos
Go Live: Our guys are staying safe and streaming from home. Engage in the forum, interact with other members, models and staff.
Most importantly, we encourage you to stay safe, stay at home, and keep watching, because even though you can’t touch anybody else, you can still touch yourself!
While that message is somewhat similar to the original message placed on the Falcon/Raging/Hot House sites by Gamma, the detail about Falcon updates being “spaced out” is not included. In fact, a Falcon rep tells Str8Up that “we’re not currently planning on changing our planned update schedule.”
