SL tier prices and economic hard times keep hitting hard, even those who are hard: To wit, Hard Alley, a notorious Second Life virtual porn sim that has been popular for years (I recall reading scandalized reports about it as far back as 2006), is in danger of going out of business, Mark "Pixeleen Mistral" McCahill reports on the Alphaville Herald. The owner cites high sim tier ($295 a month) and a decline of renters to defray those costs, problems that are universally hitting the SL economy on all varieties of sims. I doubt it represents a decline in interest for hardcore porn in SL -- about a third of the most popular sims by traffic are Adult-rated.

So what's happening here? Without investigating too deeply (and I'm not hugely het up to have a hard look at Hard Alley) my initial guess is this: