There are different kinds of deletions that have happened at SC:
- long ago, a couple of the earliest videos, like the Mardi Gras video, and a video of SC himself having sex with a model, were deleted
- a small handful of very early models, who only filmed solos, were deleted entirely from the site a number of years ago. this was maybe 3 or 4 models, with one or two videos each, nothing like the number of models deleted from CF over the years for various reasons.
- when SC sold the site, all videos showing him in them were either re-edited to remove him (where that was possible) or removed completely, where he appeared throughout. this was clearly a condition of the sale.
Other than those isolated instances, pretty much every video SC had ever released was still available up until last week.
Basically every video pre-2015 vanished overnight a week ago, along with the index pages for those videos, and all model pages for pre-2015 models.
If you're a member and have "favorited" certain models and scenes, your "favorites" page still exists, and the names of those models and titles of those scenes are still there, but the thumbnail photos for them are gone, and the links lead to 404 error pages.
This is clearly related to the Mindgeek/Visa/Mastercard legal issues.
It's been suggested in another thread that SC took down all pre-Mindgeek scenes in order to review the contracts for them and make sure they meet modern standards and weren't just grandfathered in. That seems the most plausible answer.
Whether they actually ever do that remains to be seen, it would be MUCH cheaper and easier for them just to drop those old videos entirely.