One of the most popular regional torrent sites – RARBG, announced its shutdown, citing multiple reasons, including inflation, side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The announcement comes out of the blue and took most of the users by surprise.
For the last ten years, RARBG has been one of the most popular torrent sites. In January, the site was ranked fourth on Torrent Freak’s list of most popular torrent sites.
The full shutdown statement released by the site reads as follows:
“Hello guys,
We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site.
The past 2 years have been very difficult for us – some of the people in our team died due to covid complications,
others still suffer the side effects of it – not being able to work at all.
Some are also fighting the war in Europe – ON BOTH SIDES.
Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard.
Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare.
Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket.
After an unanimous vote we’ve decided that we can no longer do it.
We are sorry :(
Bye”
RARBG was founded in 2008 and has become one of the most famous torrent sites. It is seen as a Bulgarian torrent tracker, which is understandable, given that the BG is in the name (it stands for Bulgaria). However, like other similar sites, RARBG is loaded with English content. In addition to movies and TV Shows, the site also allowed the facilitation of video games and music. Interestingly enough, the owners of RARBG did not allow users to upload the content themselves.
Since 2020, RARBG has been targeted by the Bulgarian police, although this has not led to official action.
The shutdown is the first major closure since the 2015/2016 period, when KickassTorrents, Torrentz, and ExtraTorrent all left the scene., according to TorrentFreak.
Test comment