RARBG abruptly shuts down torrent site

RARBG, one of the world’s largest torrent sites, abruptly shut down, citing the COVID pandemic and war in Ukraine.

The peer-to-peer file-sharing website suddenly closed down, posting a goodbye message on its front page. It says that the turbulent past two years pushed the admins to close down the website.

“The past two 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,” reads the message.

RARBG also quoted energy price hikes and high inflation that subsequently increased the costs of maintaining data centers in Europe. Website owners lamented they could no longer bear the costs of upkeeping the torrenting site.

“After an unanimous vote we’ve decided that we can no longer do it. We are sorry. Bye,” reads the short message.

The same message was displayed while trying to access other domains that used to lead to the torrent website, indicating that the shutdown was coordinated.

Founded around 2008, RARBG specialized in high-quality pirated video releases. Due to the illegality of the content exhibited on the website, several countries have banned access to it, including the UK, Ireland, Italy, Finland, and others.

According to data from the website comparison tool Similarweb, in April, the pooled number of visitors throughout several domains used by RARBR exceeded 12 million monthly users.