David Eliason has owned adult stores in South Dakota for years, and he’s never seen anything like this year’s DVD sales. They’re up 20 to 22 percent — in a format most people assumed was dead a decade ago, His theory as to why? The state’s new age-verification law didn’t stop porn watching, it just sent fans back to old school ways of viewing it.
New Desire for Discs
As Eliason and other adult retailers told Mashable on Monday, DVD sales are rising in U.S., specifically states that enforce online age-verification laws, and shoppers are paying cash for physical media rather than handing over an ID or allowing face scans to watch online.
And while privacy is the catalyst for the shift, it may signal something even more significant. Just as vinyl records provide a more tangible music experience that includes physical packaging, building a library and re-playing one’s favorites, the shift to adult DVD (and even VHS) is about rejecting technology’s hold on our culture. The surveillance era has basically become part of all our online experiences and the desire to be free from it might even lead to a renaissance that supports new — or rather old— forms of media and commerce.
Eliason owns three adult stores in South Dakota: Dick & Jane’s Naughty Spot in Sturgis and Rapid City, and Bonnie & Clyde’s Adult Supercenter in Rapid City and says he’s sure the sales spike is due to the new identification practices. Lewis Adams, the director of sales at Pulse Distribution, which handles about 90 percent of adult studios, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, concurs. Adams reports a bump in DVD orders from all the states enforcing these laws, with the biggest in Tennessee, Texas and Florida. While he sells to wholesalers, not to the public, order data suggests a growth in analog adult materials across the board.
“No one wants to scan their face to masturbate.”
Currently, the online industry’s preferred alternative to ID checks is device-level filtering —wherein phone or computer signals determine whether its owner is an adult— but time will tell if the move towards physical product might influence its next moves. Pornhub has reportedly written to Google, Apple and Microsoft and to US lawmakers asking for the filtering option. In any case, age verification remains a hot button issue.
“It’s hard to express what a monumental failure these online age-verification laws have been,” Mike Stabile, Free Speech Coalition, tells Mashable. “There has been almost no consumer compliance. People have shifted to foreign sites and pirate sites, they’re trading porn on Discord and Telegram, they’re using VPNs. No one wants to scan their face to masturbate.”
Age Verification = Less Screen Time
Age-verification laws are now in force in about half of US states and in the UK, France and Italy. In June 2026, the National Bureau of Economic Research found that time spent on adult sites is falling about 10 percent, with viewers moving to non-compliant sites or using VPNs. In the UK, VPN use doubled after the Online Safety Act took effect.
This is the first retail evidence that age-check laws are pushing buyers into formats regulators can’t control such as DVDs, though how much of an impact the increase will have remains to be seen, but experts don’t think it will affect online creators anytime soon in terms of who they share content.
Kim Airs, who’s worked in the industry for 32 years, does tell Mashable that she fears a return to the crackdown that followed the 1986 Meese Report (the Reagan-era commission that declared porn harmful and triggered years of prosecutions), might be the next hurdle for adult entertainment regardless. Still, she doesn’t think the shift will hurt sites like OnlyFans or Stripchat. “I’m pretty excited about it, actually, because what we watch is none of the government’s business.” she says.
“There is something to be said for the person who wants to walk into a store, pay cash for a DVD, and watch it whenever they want, and it’s no business of anyone else,” Lewis adds. “I support that person.”
