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Niconico's Mature Illustration Service Niconico Shunga to End Service

Niconico announced on Thursday that it is ending its Niconico Shunga mature illustration service on January 29 at 2:00 p.m. JST. The company explained that it would be difficult to continue the service due to the current social environment and international situation.

Illustrations on Niconico Shunga will be deleted after service ends. They will be hidden and inaccessible on users' pages. In addition, the R-15 categories, generally used for excessively sexual content, will be disabled. If users post illustrations that are considered too mature for Nico Nico Seiga, the pictures will be deleted.

Niconico Shunga launched in August 2011 as an adult version of Nico Nico Seiga, the online still-frame counterpart to Niconico Douga.

Over the past few years, numerous sites and services in Japan have had to disallow payments from various services such as Visa and Mastercard, due to customer payments being refused through those services. Such sites include, but are not limited to: Nico Nico, Melonbooks and Toranoana, DLSite (which also disallowed American Express), Fantia, Manga Library Z, and Fanza, among others.

Cietan Kitney, President of Visa Worldwide Japan, confirmed in December that while Visa wants to make its payment service available to legal and legitimate products and services as much as possible, it may sometimes decline purchases to "protect the brand."

Source: Niconico Talk's X/Twitter account via Hachima Kikо̄